Analysis of surface hardness and surface roughness in diamond burnishing of 17-4 PH stainless steel

Burnishing is a chipless secondary finishing operation which yields excellent surface finish. The present work focuses on multi-response optimization of diamond burnishing on 17-4 precipitation hardenable stainless steel under dry environment by using Taguchi based grey relation analysis (TGRA) to simultaneously minimize surface roughness and maximize surface hardness. The effect of the process parameters such as burnishing speed, burnishing feed and burnishing force on performance characteristics like surface roughness and surface hardness were studied. Taguchi's L₉ orthogonal array has been adopted for the experimental design. The optimal burnishing process parameters were found to be burnishing speed of 73 m/min, burnishing feed of 0.048 mm/rev and burnishing force of 150 N. Burnishing feed is the most significant parameter on burnishing performance characteristics. It has been proved that the performance characteristics of a diamond burnishing process have been improved by effective use of this technique. (paper)