Experimental Study on the Characteristics of Surface Roughness in Ultrasonic Aided High-Speed Lapping of Engineering Ceramics

The surface roughness of machined surface is one of the important indicators to evaluate the workpiece machining quality. In order to clarify the change law of surface roughness in ultrasonic aided high-speed lapping with solid diamond abrasive, a series of ultrasonic and conventional lapping experiments of different engineering ceramics, such as Al2O3, ZrO2 and ZTA, were carried out on precision lathe with self-made high-speed ultrasonic lapping device. The research results show that the value of surface roughness in ultrasonic aided lapping is lower than that in conventional lapping. With the assistance of ultrasonic vibration, the surface quality can be improved obviously. In ultrasonic aided lapping, there is an optimum lapping pressure from which a better surface roughness value can be obtained. Because of different physical and mechanical properties, material removal mechanisms of the three kinds of engineering ceramics present different characteristics, which lead to the different surface roughness even though under the same lapping conditions. The research of the paper is helpful to optimize lapping technique and improve the surface quality.