Research on ultrasonic vibration-assisted laser polishing of the 304 stainless steel

Abstract

Laser polishing is a non-contact polishing method and it is widely used in metal material polishing. The mechanism of laser polishing is to relocate the melted material of the shallow surface from the peaks to valleys to improve the quality of the polished surface. In this paper, according to the research requirements of ultrasonic vibration-assisted laser polishing (UVLP), a UVLP device with the lens as the vibration element is designed. Then, modal analysis was performed to characterize the effect of geometric parameters on the frequency performance and optimize the dimension of the UVLP device. The intermittent polishing process can be realized by adjusting the amplitude and frequency, and the laser energy density can be adjusted precisely. Therefore, the micro peaks and valleys on the 304 stainless steel surface can be heated evenly by UVLP. The effects of amplitude, scanning speed, laser power, and focus offset on UVLP processing of 304 stainless steel were studied experimentally. Finally, the experimental results are presented to illustrate the characteristics and performance of the system. Compared with traditional laser polishing (TLP), the better polishing effect of the workpiece surface can be obtained by UVLP.