Effect of electrochemical polishing on surface quality of nickel-titanium shape memory alloy after milling

Nickel-titanium shape memory alloys have been widely used in medical fields due to their unique shape memory effect, superelasticity, corrosion resistance and biocompatibility. However, there are still many processing difficulties to achieve required machined surface quality due to their high toughness and low elasticity. This paper proposes a sequential processing operations including milling, burnishing and electrochemical polishing. The effects of electrochemical parameters on surface quality, such as surface roughness, work hardening and surface grain size, are investigated in detail using orthogonal experiment. It is found that the electrochemical polishing parameters have the most significant effect on improving the surface roughness. With adjusting electrochemical polishing parameters, the surface roughness can be reduced to one tenth of the original value obtained by milling operations. Moreover, the current density in electrochemical polishing has more important influence on the surface quality than the distance and polishing time does, respectively. The conditions of 1.5 A/cm2 current density, 7 cm electrode distance and 20 s polishing time can obtain the lower surface roughness, hardening degree and the larger grain size. The effects of electrochemical parameters on surface roughness, work hardening and grain size are related to each other. The degree of work hardening can be qualitatively estimated by surface roughness and grain size to avoid damage to the machined surface.