Investigation of a plain ball burnishing process on differently machined Aluminium EN AW 2007 surfaces

Burnishing is an effective chipless finishing process for improving workpiece properties: hardness, vibration resistance and surface quality. The application of this technology is limited to rotationally symmetrical structures of deformable metals. Because of the multiaxial characteristics, the transfer of this force controlled technology on to prismatic shapes requires a comprehensive process development. The main purpose of this paper is the characterization of a plain burnishing process on aluminium EN AW 2007 with a linear moved, spherical diamond tool. The method of design of experiments was used to investigate the influence of different machined surfaces in conjunction with process parameters: burnishing force, burnishing direction, path distance and burnishing speed. FEM simulation was utilized for strain and stress analysis. The experiments show, that unlike the process parameters the initial surface roughness as 3rd order shape deviation does not have a significant influence on the finished surface. Furthermore a completely new surface is created by the process, with properties independent from the initial surface roughness.