A Fundamental Introduction and Recent Developments of Magnetic Abrasive Finishing: A Review

Recent industrial progress demands various advance machining operations for achieving the superfinishing surfaces. These types of surface cannot be achieved by conventional finishing processes such as grinding, burnishing, honing and lapping. In many cases, some parts of machine do not have requisite surface finish and properties of surface. Firstly, honing superfinishing and other finishing operations are used to finish the small part of a machine. Medical instruments, components of aerospace and other atomic energy parts demand accuracy in surface finish. For finding this type of finishing, a recent or novel finishing operation is denominated, which is known as magnetic abrasive finishing process. The magnetic abrasive finishing is a non-traditional finishing process. This process is applicable to achieve good surface finish and enhance mechanical properties. In magnetic abrasive finishing, the workpiece is put between the magnetic North and South Poles and the gap between the poles and the workpiece is filled with magnetic abrasive particles. The magnetic abrasive flexible brush is made when abrasive particles interact with each other and magnetic field is created in the finishing zone for removing materials to achieve good surface quality of the workpiece material. In this paper, we discuss the different parameters of MAF which have a huge impact on the achievement of surface finish as well as on surface quality of various alloys.