INFLUENCE OF BURNISHING PROCESS ON SURFACE-ROUGHNESS, HARDNESS, AND MICROSTRUCTURE OF SOME NONFERROUS METALS

Burnishing is a cold working process, which easily produces a smooth a nd work-hardened surface by plastic deformation of surface irregularit ies. In the present work, the influence of the main burnishing paramet ers (speed, feed, force, number of tool passes, and ball diameter) on the surface roughness and the hardness of two different non-ferrous me tals were studied. Furthermore, subsurface hardness and microstructure under specific conditions were also studied. It was found that the bu rnishing forces and the number of tool passes are the most pronounced parameters, which have great effects on the workpiece's surface during the burnishing process. A simple, inexpensive and newly designed ball -burnishing tool, with interchangeable adapter for using different bal l diameters, was used throughout the experimental work presented in th is paper.