A study on the shape of the surface generated by abrasive jet machining

A large number of investigations on the abrasive jet machining (AJM) with output parameters as material removal rate (MRR), penetration rate and surface finish have been carried out and reported by various authors. But no detailed investigations are known to be carried out on the shape of the abrasive jet machined surface. Deburring, which includes the edge conditioning/shaping, offers a potential application area for AJM. In this paper, a semi-empirical equation is derived to obtain the shape of the surface generated in AJM. With the help of this equation, it is shown that the abrasive jet machined surface is reverse bell mouthed in shape with an edge radius at the entry side of the target surface. It is also observed that the entry side diameter increases with the input parameters. The effects of particle size, stand-off-distance, center line and peripheral velocities of the jet on the generated shape are also discussed in this paper. The result of this work was compared with the result of earlier abrasive jet deburring experimental work for edge radiusing and found satisfactory. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.