Fluid jet polishing of steel moulds

Abstract

Fluid Jet Polishing (FJP) is a novel polishing technology, which experienced growing interest for niche applications over the recent years. This publication suggests FJP for processing of steel moulds for plastic injection moulding. These moulds are typically finished manually by skilled experts to date. FJP is capable of complementing the manual procedure or even replacing it. Fundamental knowledge about the process and its special tool function is provided. An experimental setup is demonstrated along with a polishing strategy and first results on different materials. It is shown, that it is possible to smoothen residual features from grinding, milling and turning below 0.12 mm. Furthermore an extract of current research is illustrated. Lastly a recently designed and built robot cell is presented, which is developed towards automation of the Fluid Jet Polishing process in the near future.