Effect of parameters on surface roughness during the ultra-precision polishing of titanium alloy

by Yonggou Lou, Hongbing Wu

Titanium alloys have great potential in ultra-precision situations due to the excellent properties, such as high corrosion resistance, high specific-strength and high biocompatibility. However, the application of titanium alloys in ultra-precision field is limited by the poor machinability. There are difficulties in obtaining the optical surface. In this study, the possibility for obtaining optically graded surfaces of titanium alloys by ultra-precision polishing was investigated. Before the ultra-precision polishing, ultra-precision turning with a single point diamond tool was used to get all sample surfaces. But, titanium alloy is difficult to obtain good surface quality by ultra-precision diamond turning. The samples results confirmed that most of the surface roughness values are higher than 30 nm. In order to explore the polishing process, a large number of ultra-precision polishing experiments were conducted. In addition, the effects of different ultra-precision polishing parameters on the surface profiles of titanium alloy Ti6Al4V were investigated in depth. The results show that the average values of surface roughness of titanium alloy parts with ultra-precision turning can be further reduced by 70% or so by ultra-precision polishing. Using a reasonable combination of high spindle speed and large cutting depth, the value of surface roughness can even be lower than 2 nm.