An experimental study on tool wear of hydrodynamic polishing process

The tool wear characteristics of the hydrodynamic polishing process under various lubricating conditions are investigated in this study. Both the tool wear and corresponding machining rate were experimentally examined. It is shown that both the tool waviness and radius of tool curvature changed and had specific trends in the wear process. Especially, the wear rate of tool under semi-contact lubricating condition was not necessarily larger than that under the non-contact one. The experimental data indicated that the effects of tool wear on machining rate highly depended on the lubricating condition of tool. The trend of machining rate versus accumulated machining time under non-contact lubricating condition was very different from that under the semi-contact one. The study showed that some of the qualitative relationships between tool wear and machining rate could be properly explained from the elasto-hydrodynamic lubrication theorem and the previously proposed machinging theorem for hydrodynamic polishing process