Investigation of a novel finishing tool in magnetic field assisted finishing for titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V

Abstract Titanium alloys have numerous applications in field of medical industries, aerospace and biology owing to its excellent mechanical properties and corrosion resistance. A novel magnetic field-assisted finishing (MFAF) tool is developed to carry out the finishing operation of Ti-6Al-4 V workpieces. Accordingly, the use of the designed magnetic field generator integrated with four permanent magnets as a tool to achieve alternating magnetic regions. The size of magnetic pole is calculated via theoretical analysis. Two kinds of distribution of four magnetic poles (N-N-S-S and N-S-N-S) are performed by using simulation models, and experimental measurements are conducted to validate the simulation results which show good agreement between them. Experiments were carried out to verify the performance of the designed tool for Ti-6Al-4 V workpieces finishing based on an established platform. The results show that, with the assistance of the finishing parameters control, the surface quality is dominated by varying the particle sizes, working gaps, feed rates and spindle rotational speeds. The surface roughness of 46 nm was achieved after finishing process based on the initial value of 1.121 μm, which improved by over 95%. The scratches on the surface are significantly reduced by metalloscope and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) observations.