The impact of electrochemical assistance on the microturning process

Abstract

In the paper, the concept of an electrochemically assisted microturning process is presented. This is a hybrid machining process in which microcutting directly removes the material while electrochemical passivation changes the conditions of material removal. A test stand was designed and built to investigate this process. The experimental part includes a discussion of the research methodology and a comparison of the straight turning results in the case of machining 1.4301 stainless steel without and with electrochemical assistance. The change of the main cutting force resulting from electrochemical assistance was selected as the main investigated technological factor. Based on this study, we can state that in the case analyzed here (when only passivation is taken into account), electrochemical assistance brings significant benefits when the depth-of-cut is ≤1 μm.

A Study on Microturning with Electrochemical Assistance of the Cutting Process

“…For both variants of assistance, the research was carried out on the test stand described in detail in Ref. [ 26 ]. The tests were performed in accordance with the experiment theory with the input and constant parameters as in Table 1 .…”

Investigation of material removal in inner-jet electrochemical grinding of GH4169 alloy

“…A passivation layer develops on the machined surface because a passive NaNO 3 electrolyte is used 11 , 13 . The use of a high applied voltage accelerates the formation of the passivation film, thereby greatly increasing the processing efficiency.…”

“…Because of the mechanism by which it removes material, ECM has a significant advantage over both EDM and LBM in that it can produce machined workpieces without heat-affected zones and recast layers 11 , 12 . However, ECM with a passive aqueous electrolyte suffers from the major disadvantage that a non-conductive passivation layer is formed on the machined surface of the metal, which can prevent further electrolytic dissolution of the anodic workpiece 13 – 15 . Electrochemical grinding (ECG) is a non-conventional hybrid process based on a combination of ECM and mechanical grinding (MG) 16 , with the electrochemical and abrasive actions contributing about 90% and 10%, respectively, of the total material removal 17 , 18 .…”