What is Abrasive Flow Machining(AFM)?

Abrasive Flow Machining(AFM), which was developed in 1960s in Unites States, is an efficient method for surface finishing by deburring, polishing and radiusing. The AFM process involves flowing an abrasive viscoelastic polymer-based media over or through a workpiece at defined pressure, temperature, and flow rate.

Principal of Abrasive Flow Machining

The AFM process operates by the simple flow of abrasive, polymer-based, media over the surfaces and edges of a workpiece and through internal passages that are difficult or impossible to access by other means. It can easily polish internal passages as well as debur and radius the intersections of internal passages. Appropriately designed fixtures and tooling (jigs) enable AFM to debur, radius, and polish outer surfaces and edges. Precisely controlled surface finishing can be achieved by extruding the abrasive media back and forth under pressure that is created and controlled by the hydraulic power system within the AFM machine.

Surface Finishing Capability

AFM has capability to produce surface finishes as good as 0.05μm Ra, debur holes as small as 50μm, and radius edges from 0.025mm to 1.5mm. AFM achieves these surface finishing results by uniformly and microscopically abrading the workpiece and thereby reducing the degree of surface roughness.

Precise Material Removal

Because AFM uniformly removes only a very small amount of workpiece material on each pass,the process can consistently produce improved surface finishes with minimal material removal. The AFM process can also be precisely applied to tune the flow behavior of small passages thereby achieving prescribed service flow rates.

Application of AFM

The proper combination of Media, Machine and Tools, make it possible to apply the AFM process to a broad range of work-pieces as characterized by passage geometry, work-piece material, production volume, and industry:

Media

High viscoelastic media used for homogeneous inner surface finishing specially for die and mold. Low viscoelastic media used for deburring and radius making by high speed flowing.
Appropriate selection of viscoelasticity of base rubber(polymer), size and hardness of abrasive grain is required for media productions.

Merit of AFM
  1. By using AFM, you can do machining where some tools can not reach and you can get homogeneous surface finishing. Besides,there is no secondary burr and no affected layer is created by residual stress or thermal strain during machining.
  2. By using AFM, you can save manual operation for die polishing and even armature worker can produce homogeneous surface finishing.
  3. By using AFM, precious and homogeneous surface finishing is guaranteed. By flowing the media only one direction(one way flow), the fife of metal surface is extended and quality of surface is much improved.

Our Abrasive Flow Machine

Introduction of our Abrasive Flow Machine
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