Fundamentals of Mass Finishing

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Eckart Uhlmann
• Subject Area: Metal-Cutting and Abrasive Manufacturing Engineering
• Term: from 2011 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 214340103

Mass finishing is a widely used manufacturing process for finishing, edge rounding and deburring operations. It is applied for mass goods for the consumer industry as well as for large, integral, delicate parts for example in the turbine industry. Nevertheless, fundamental scientific knowledge concerning the removal mechanisms in mass finishing is still lacking. To this day, process design and control is still heavily dependent on the empirical studies and the experience of individuals. This is not suitable for complex parts with small batch sizes. For this reason the Institute for Machine Tools and Factory Management at TU Berlin aims at systematically researching the fundamentals of mass finishing. Furthermore, the in house developed process of robot-guided drag finishing enables the machining of complex parts with great flexibility. The proposed research project aims at systematically analyzing the influence of process parameters and tools on surface evolution during mass finishing of metallic parts and thus enabling an optimized process design.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants