The technology of finishing for optics, ceramics, and semiconductors is one of the most promising uses of the magnetorheological effect. It perfectly coupled with computer control, allowing in quantity production the unique accuracy and quality of a polished surface to be achieved. The polishing process may appear as follows. A part rotating on the spindle is brought into contact with an magnetorheological polishing (MRP) fluid which is set in motion by the moving wall. In the region where the part and the MRP fluid are brought into contact, the applied magnetic field creates the conditions necessary for the material removal from the part surface. The material removal takes place in a certain region contacting the surface of the part which can be called the polishing spot or zone. The polishing process comes to the program-simulated movement of the polishing spot over the part surface. The mechanism of the material removal in the contact zone is considered as a process governed by the particularities of the Bingham flow in the contact zone. The problem like the hydrodynamic theory of lubrication is treated for plastic film. As this takes place the shear stresses distribution in the film is obtained from the experimental measurements of the pressure distribution in the contact spot. Reasonable correlation between calculated and experimental magnitudes of the material removal rate for glass polishing lends support to the validity of the approach.

Recent advances in the study of the magnetorheological finishing (MRF) have allowed for the characterization of the dynamic yield stress of the magnetorheological (MR) fluid, as well as the nanohardness (H(nano)) of the carbonyl iron (CI) used in MRF. Knowledge of these properties has allowed for a more complete study of the mechanisms of material removal in MRF. Material removal experiments show that the nanohardness of CI is important in MRF with nonaqueous MR fluids with no nonmagnetic abrasives, but is relatively unimportant in aqueous MR fluids or when nonmagnetic abrasives are present. The hydrated layer created by the chemical effects of water is shown to change the way material is removed by hard CI as the MR fluid transitions from a nonaqueous MR fluid to an aqueous MR fluid. Drag force measurements and atomic force microscope scans demonstrate that, when added to a MR fluid, nonmagnetic abrasives (cerium oxide, aluminum oxide, and diamond) are driven toward the workpiece surface because of the gradient in the magnetic field and hence become responsible for material removal. Removal rates increase with the addition of these polishing abrasives. The relative increase depends on the amount and type of abrasive used.

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Finish polishing of optics with magnetic media has evolved extensively over the past decade. Of the approaches conceived during this time, the most recently developed process is called magnetorheological finishing (MRF). In MRF, a magnetic field stiffens a fluid suspension in contact with a workpiece. The workpiece is mounted on the rotating spindle of a computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine. Driven by an algorithm for machine control that contains information about the MRF process, the machine deterministically polishes out the workpiece by removing microns of subsurface damage, smoothing the surface to a microroughness of 10 A rms, and correcting surface figure errors to less than 0. 1 im p-v. Spheres and aspheres can be processed with the same machine set-up using the appropriate machine program. This paper describes MRF and gives examples which illustrate the capabilities of a pre-prototype machine located at the Center for Optics Manufacturing (COM).

A concept of material removal based on the principle of conservation of particles momentum in a binary suspension is applied to analyze material removal in magnetorheological finishing and magnetorheological jet processes widely used in precision optics fabrication. According to this concept, a load for surface indentation by abrasive particles is provided at their interaction near the wall with heavier basic (magnetic) particles, which fluctuate (due to collision) in the shear flow of concentrated suspension. The model is in good qualitative and quantitative agreement with experimental results.