Surface finishing of hardened steel with abrasive brushes

Standard finishing processes normally require special machine tools whereby the process can be time-consuming and cost-intensive due to a high non-productive time. An integration of the finishing process into the existing machine tools should reduce or avoid the mentioned disadvantages. A high potential to integrate the finishing process into the existing machine tools offers abrasive brushes. Until now, due to limited fundamentals of the cutting process of abrasive brushes the high potential is unused. This paper presents new findings concerning the brushing process of hardened steel as a typically used material for functional surfaces. Therefore, characteristic values of the specific abrasive brushes were detected and the influence of the process parameters on the machining results was determined. The results show that the process parameters and the use of cooling lubricant have a significant influence on the brushing process. Furthermore, a suitable use of different process parameter combinations allows an efficient manufacturing of a surface roughness Ra < 0.1 mm.