• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.51-56
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• 2017

Nitinol, a shape memory alloy (SMA), is manufactured from titanium and nickel and it used in various fields such as electrical applications, micro sensors. It is also recommended as a material in medical for implant because it has excellent organic compatibility. Nitinol is intended to be inserted into the human body, products require a high-quality surface and low residual stress. To overcome this problems, explore electrolyte polishing (EP) is being explored that may be appropriate for use with nitinol. EP is a particularly useful machining method because, as a non contact machining method, it produces neither machining heat nor internal stress in the machined materials. Sandpaper polishing is also useful machining method because, as a contact machining method, it can easily good surface roughness in the machined materials. The electrolyte polishing (EP) process has an effect of improving the surface roughness as well as the film polishing process, but has a characteristic that the residual stress is hardly generated because the work hardened layer is not formed on the processed surface. The sandpaper polishing process has the effect of improving the surface roughness but the residual stress remains in the surface. We experimented with three conditions of polishing process. First condition is the conventional polishing. Second condition is the electrochemical polishing(EP). And Last condition is a mixing process with the conventional polishing and the EP. Surface roughness and residual stress of the nitinol before a polishing process were $0.474{\mu}mRa$, -45.38MPa. Surface roughness and residual stress of the nitinol after mixing process of the conventional polishing and the EP were $1.071{\mu}mRa$, -143.157MPa. Surface roughness and residual stress of the nitinol after conventional polishing were $0.385{\mu}mRa$ and -205.15MPa. Surface roughness and residual stress of sandpaper and EP nitinol were $1.071{\mu}mRa$, -143.157MPa. The result shows that the EP process is a residual stress free process that eliminates the residual stress on the surface while eliminating the deformed layer remaining on the surface through composite surface machining rather than single surface machining. The EP process can be used for biomaterials such as nitinol and be applied to polishing of wafers and various fields.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.191-198
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• 2023

We examined the martensitic transformation kinetics for metastable stainless steel during electrochemical polishing (EP) using different types of electrolytes. Martensite fraction measured with EBSD showed that the electrolyte with high relative permittivity exhibited comparably higher levels of martensitic transformation. The amount of charge build-up on the specimen surface during EP with different types of electrolytes was calculated using COMSOL multiphysics simulations to understand these phase transformation characteristics. The effect of charge build-up-induced stress was analyzed using previously published first-principles calculations. We discovered that the electrolyte with high relative permittivity accumulated a greater amount of charge build-up, resulting in a stronger driving force for stress-induced martensitic transformation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.319-324
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• 2013

In this study, an EP (electro-polishing)-MAP (magnetic abrasive polishing) hybrid process was developed as a precision finishing process. To evaluate the characteristics of this EP-MAP hybrid process, a series of experiments were carried out using various working gaps, current densities, and electrolyte concentrations. As a result, $NaNO_3$ was found to be very suitable as the electrolyte of the hybrid process because there was no electrochemical reaction with the CNT-Co composite. Moreover, an increase in the magnetic flux density affected the liquidity of the electrolyte and prevented it from flowing into the CNT-Co composite powder. For that reason, the lower liquidity of the electrolyte increased the thermal energy on the surface of the workpiece.