Transforming Burnishing Techniques: A Novel Method to Enhance Efficiency and Surface Quality Through Tool Feed Variation

Slide burnishing is a non-material-removal process that improves surface finish by plastically deforming peaks into valleys using a spherical hard tool. Conventionally, multiple passes were applied with the same setup to address residual peaks, even though the first pass achieves most of the deformation. Each pass consumes equal time and energy unless parameters like feed or force are adjusted, and changing these parameters requires another cycle of passes. This repetitive approach leads to inefficiencies in time and energy, highlighting the need for different approaches to reduce redundancy while improving surface integrity. This experiment aims to change these processes by changing the feed after each pass to help the tool follow a different path than the first round. Four levels of tool feed with three levels of force and three passes were tested in nine runs that required 27 runs in the conventional method for comparison and were used to burnish the face-milled C45 steel. The new method enhanced the initial surface with up to a 66.6% decrease in Sq, greater than by the old method, and up to 69.3% in Ssk. The new method showed more steady and predictable changes of skewness than the old method during parameter changes. The old method performed better in reducing kurtosis levels when a higher number of passes (three and four) were used. These results demonstrate significant improvement over the traditional techniques, paving the way for innovative advancements and further research in the field.