Process Understanding of Plasma Electrolytic Polishing through Multiphysics Simulation and Inline Metrology

Abstract

Currently, the demand for surface treatment methods like plasma electrolytic polishing (PeP)—a special case of electrochemical machining—is increasing. This paper provides a literature review on the fundamental mechanisms of the plasma electrolytic polishing process and discusses simulated and experimental results. The simulation shows and describes a modelling approach of the polishing effect during the PeP process. Based on the simulation results, it can be assumed that PeP can be simulated as an electrochemical machining process and that the simulation can be used for roughness and processing time predictions. The simulation results exhibit correlations with the experimentally-achieved approximation for roughness decrease. The experimental part demonstrates the results of the PeP processing for different times. The results for different types of roughness show that roughness decreases exponentially. Additionally, a current efficiency calculation was made. Based on the experimental results, it can be assumed that PeP is a special electrochemical machining process with low passivation.

Influence of Postprocessing on Wear Resistance of Aerospace Steel Parts Produced by Laser Powder Bed Fusion

“…Another problem is the postprocessing of the obtained surfaces with a complex character and internal cavities that are mostly required for the parts produced by additive manufacturing [13][14][15]. Most of the postprocessing methods are oriented on the treatment of linear surfaces as mechanical abrasive [16][17][18] (the achievable roughness arithmetic mean deviation R a is of 0.04 µm [19]), laser-plasma [14,[20][21][22][23], ion-plasma (achievable average microroughness is up to 0.1-0.2 µm with a decrease in pulse width to 1.5 ns [24][25][26]), or electron beam [27][28][29] polishing that showed its effectiveness only on small flat areas with achievable microroughness more than 1 µm, ultrasonic plastic deformation, or their combination. Furthermore, the methods based on mechanical machining often leave cutting traces or traces of erosion such as those from cavitation-abrasive finishing that can dramatically influence the functional surfaces' wear resistance.…”

Product/Process Fingerprint in Micro Manufacturing

“…As far as machining processes are concerned, Process Fingerprints were established and validated for electrical discharge machining (EDM) byŚwiercz et al [9], for micro EDM drilling by Bellotti et al [10], for plasma electrolytic polishing by Danilov et al [11], for jet electrochemical machining by Yahyavi Zanjani et al [12], for nanosecond pulsed laser ablation by Cai et al [13], and for micro grinding by Fook et al [14]. c.…”

Analysis on Machining Performance of Nickel-Base Superalloy by Electrochemical Micro-milling with High-Speed Spiral Electrode

“…With the development of new and high technology, the demand for metal micro-structures is gradually increasing. Especially with the development of MEMS, various countries continue to increase their research on micro-machining technology due to its application and huge development prospects [1,2,3,4]. As a very promising micro-machining method, micro-electrochemical machining has been favored by researchers from all over the world due to its excellent machining characteristics.…”