Surface quality improvement by using a novel driving system design in single-side planetary abrasive lapping

Abstract

For the traditional single-side planetary abrasive lapping process particle trajectories passing over the target surface are found to be periodically superposed due to the rational rotation speed ratio of the lapping plate to workpiece that could affect the material removal uniformity and hence its surface quality. This paper reports on a novel driving system design with combination of the tapered roller and contact roller to realize the irrational rotation speed ratio of the lapping plate to workpiece in the single-side planetary abrasive lapping process for the improvement of surface quality. Both of the numerical and experimental investigations have been conducted to evaluate the abrasive lapping performance of the novel driving system. It has been found from the numerical simulation that particle trajectories would theoretically cover the whole target surface if the lapping time is long enough due to their non-periodic characteristics, which can guarantee the uniformity of material removal from the surface of workpiece with relatively high surface quality. The encouraging experimental results underline the potential of the novel driving system design in the application of the single-side planetary abrasive lapping for the improvement of the surface quality in terms of surface roughness and material removal uniformity.