THERMAL INVESTIGATION OF A BONING PROCESS UTILIZING POLYBOROSILOXANE IMPREGNATED WITH ABRASIVE PARTICLES

A novel honing and polishing process utilizes polyborosiloxane impregn ated with a range of abrasives in particulate form, to polish mould ca vities of complex geometry. The polymer, which deforms in such a way a s to allow complete coverage of the target surface, is used to carry t he abrasive. This compound is agitated using an ultrasonic source and is made to flow relative to the target surface. The process causes hea ting of the various components in the system. This is the second paper concerned with the prediction of the resultant temperature distributi ons. The work reported here is an extension of the previous work to ta ke into account the complex geometry of the multi-component system use d in the operation. Furthermore, the development of the honing process required the introduction of flow of polishing compound relative to t he workpiece. As a result the previous work has been extended to take into account the thermal effects of this flow. The modelling work has been complemented by measurement of temperatures in a geometry that is representative of the processing requirements. The calculated and mea sured results have been compared and the model validated accordingly.