Advanced finishing processes for internal cylindrical surfaces

With the advent of the engineering industry, there has been a drastic increase in the requirement for parts with high precision and surface accuracy. Additional challenges occur when the part to be finished has intricate geometry and difficult to reach places for the tool. In the current situation, modern industries rely on very sophisticated gear for achieving a nano-level polished inner cylindrical surface with excellent precision and speed. Numerous finishing operations, including grinding, lapping, and honing, are frequently used and well established; they are, however, ineffective when it comes to finishing internal cylindrical surfaces at the nanometre level. To eliminate these issues, there are several finishing processes available, including rotational abrasive flow finishing (R-AFF), ultrasonic abrasive flow finishing (AFF), etc. Additionally, different variants of magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) processes and magnetorheological (MR) finishing processes, such as chemical-assisted magnetic abrasive finishing (CMAF) and rotational magnetorheological honing (R-MRH), etc., are being employed. This is due to the ability of magnetic-assisted techniques to regulate and effectively control forces occurring during the finishing process. This study reviews, describes, and analyses magnetic finishing techniques employed in finishing internal cylindrical surfaces and the mechanisms behind these processes.