Abstract
Magnetic-Field Assisted Finishing (MAF) is a polishing process that utilizes a slurry mixture made of ferrous and abrasive particles in a liquid medium, known as a brush. The brush attached to a magnetic tool directly interacts with the surface of a workpiece and removes any imperfections and defects in the surface giving a smooth and nice surface finish. In this study, two distinct MAF setups were applied to the surface of chromium alloyed low carbon steel sheets to achieve the surface finish. The preliminary studies were conducted on one setup to understand the polishing behavior of the sheets and the other setup was designed to polish larger areas of the sheets to mimic the practical sheet producing environment. The effect of processing conditions such as types and sizes of abrasives, brush composition, and finishing time to attain the final surface roughness of the sheets was studied. The brush with the weight composition of 4:1:1.5 (iron: 3 μm black ceramic: silicone) was found to be the optimal condition for polishing the sheet metal samples. The optimal conditions obtained were applied to the larger scaled experimental setup. The final surface roughness of 38 nm and 220 nm were achieved in these experimental setups, respectively.
