Surface Treatment Of Titanium Dioxide Alloy: Analysis Of Oscillating Grinding And Polishing Process

In the processing and production of titanium alloy parts, problems such as corner burrs, surface oxide layers, processing lines, and uneven micro-roughness are the key pain points that affect the appearance quality, assembly accuracy, and stability of the product. The traditional grinding method has low efficiency, large manual errors, and special-shaped dead corners that are difficult to handle. The oscillating grinding and polishing process has become a precision finishing technology for titanium alloy special-shaped parts and complex structural parts with the advantages of strong adaptability, uniform processing, no damage to the substrate, and mass production.

1. The Core Principle Of The Process

The oscillating grinding and polishing of titanium alloy belongs to the wet overall polishing process. Its core principle is: the titanium alloy workpiece is completely embedded in the quantitative prefabricated abrasive, with water-soluble special grinding and polishing additives, relying on the high-frequency oscillation power of the equipment, so that the abrasive, polishing liquid and the workpiece form a continuous and uniform relative friction movement.

Under the action of high-frequency reciprocating oscillation, the abrasive continuously grinds the surface, corners, holes, grooves, dead corners and other artificially difficult-to-process areas of the titanium alloy workpiece in trace amounts, gradually removes processing burrs, sharp edges, rust and oxide layers, smooth the surface knife lines and scratches, and finally realizes the overall chamfering, leveling, and fine polishing effects of the workpiece, and obtains a uniform, delicate, and high-quality surface with consistent luster.

The whole process is flexibly ground throughout the process, without hard impact, which can maximize the dimensional accuracy of the titanium alloy substrate, will not cause deformation, bumps, and scratches of the workpiece, and is suitable for the finishing needs of various high-precision titanium alloy parts.

2. Diversified Abrasive Selection And Application

Abrasive is the core medium that determines the polishing effect of titanium alloy. The process can flexibly choose a single abrasive or a mixed ratio abrasive according to the hardness of the titanium material, the structure of the workpiece, and the processing needs, and the adaptability is extremely strong.

1) Mainstream Hard Abrasive Material

Commonly used materials include alumina (molten, sintered, natural alumina), corundum, quartz, ceramics, plastics, etc., with rich hardness gradients, which can take into account the dual needs of deburring, strong cutting and fine mirror polishing.

2) Abrasive Setting Structure

The industry generally adopts prefabricated abrasives to make regular structures such as dihedral, cylindrical, and diamond-shaped. Compared with natural irregular abrasives, prefabricated abrasives have uniform grinding strength, stable loss, higher processing efficiency and stronger economy. They are the preferred solution for batch finishing of titanium alloys.

3) Rolling Auxiliary Grinding Materials

For the rust removal, descaling, and rough leveling processes of titanium alloy, it can be used with auxiliary materials such as pumice, quartz, granite particles, shell particles, iron shavings, and ceramic fragments to quickly remove the heavy oxide layer and stubborn stains on the surface of the workpiece.

The key principle of selection: The particle size of the abrasive must be adapted to the hole position and gap structure of the workpiece, and the abrasive specifications must be accurately matched according to the size, shape, depth and dead angle of the workpiece to avoid problems such as stuck material, uneven grinding, local over-polishing, and polishing blind spots.

3. Process Ratio And Key Operating Specifications

The quality of the finished product of oscillating grinding and polishing is highly dependent on the proportion of fillers, solution ratio and operation details, which is the core key to stable mass production of the process.

1) Abrasive filling amount: The total filling amount of abrasive and workpiece inside the drum is standard controlled at 70% of the volume of the drum. A moderate filling amount can ensure sufficient abrasive movement space and uniform friction, so as to avoid blocking the movement of too much filling, too little filling, and insufficient grinding force.

2) Polishing solution ratio: The filling amount of water-soluble polishing solution accounts for about 95% of the volume of the drum, which ensures that the workpiece and the abrasive are completely infiltrated and wet uniform grinding is achieved.

3) Safe operation of acidic solution: If the process needs to add acidic additives to strengthen the descaling and passivation effects, water and acid must be added first. Direct acid addition is strictly prohibited to prevent local corrosion of titanium alloy workpieces by high-concentration acids and cause surface damage.

4) Solution replacement cycle: As the processing time increases, the concentration of the polishing solution will continue to decay, the activity will decrease, and the grinding and polishing effect will gradually fail. The concentration needs to be tested regularly and the liquid replaced in time to ensure the uniform quality of the batch of products.

4. Processing Time And Quality Control

There is no fixed uniform length of time for oscillating grinding of titanium alloy, and the processing interval ranges from a few minutes to several hours.

The processing time, abrasive type, and solution concentration match each other. The optimal process parameters need to be calibrated experimentally according to the titanium alloy material state, workpiece roughness requirements, burr size, and polishing level requirements. After accurately matching the parameters, the finishing effect of uniform gloss, no dead ends, no scratches, and high consistency on the surface of the workpiece can be achieved.

5. Material Recycling And Recycling

The process has the advantages of green, energy-saving and low-cost mass production. After the processing is completed, the workpiece and abrasive are discharged uniformly, and the finished workpiece and abrasive are quickly sorted through special screening and separation equipment. Qualified and intact abrasives can be recycled and put into production repeatedly, which greatly reduces the cost of consumables, and is suitable for large-scale, normalized titanium alloy finishing production by enterprises.

6. Equipment Classification And Production Adaptation

Commonly used oscillating finishing equipment is divided into two categories: stand-alone and online.：

-Stand-alone equipment: suitable for small batch, multi-specification, customized titanium alloy workpiece finishing, high flexibility；

-Online equipment: suitable for large-scale standardized production of assembly lines, high efficiency and strong consistency, suitable for mass production and processing of large-scale titanium products enterprises.

Enterprises can flexibly choose models according to their own production capacity, product categories, and production rhythm, and adapt to different production scenarios.

7. Comprehensive Process Advantages And Application Scenarios

This process breaks through the limitations of traditional polishing and is not limited by the size, shape, and complex structure of the workpiece. It can complete the whole process of deburring, sharp edge chamfering, rust removal and descaling, surface leveling, and fine polishing of titanium alloy workpieces in one stop.

Flexible processing throughout the process, no deformation, no injury to the substrate, full coverage of dead corners, good consistency of finished products, mass production, widely used in aviation, medical, mechanical precision parts, civil titanium products and other titanium alloy parts surface finishing processing, is currently an efficient, stable and cost-effective mainstream process in the field of titanium alloy finishing.