Abstract
Nitinol, a shape memory alloy (SMA), is manufactured from titanium and nickel and it used in various fields such as electrical applications, micro sensors. It is also recommended as a material in medical for implant because it has excellent organic compatibility. Nitinol is intended to be inserted into the human body, products require a high-quality surface and low residual stress. To overcome this problems, explore electrolyte polishing (EP) is being explored that may be appropriate for use with nitinol. EP is a particularly useful machining method because, as a non contact machining method, it produces neither machining heat nor internal stress in the machined materials. Sandpaper polishing is also useful machining method because, as a contact machining method, it can easily good surface roughness in the machined materials. The electrolyte polishing (EP) process has an effect of improving the surface roughness as well as the film polishing process, but has a characteristic that the residual stress is hardly generated because the work hardened layer is not formed on the processed surface. The sandpaper polishing process has the effect of improving the surface roughness but the residual stress remains in the surface. We experimented with three conditions of polishing process. First condition is the conventional polishing. Second condition is the electrochemical polishing(EP). And Last condition is a mixing process with the conventional polishing and the EP. Surface roughness and residual stress of the nitinol before a polishing process were $0.474{\mu}mRa$, -45.38MPa. Surface roughness and residual stress of the nitinol after mixing process of the conventional polishing and the EP were $1.071{\mu}mRa$, -143.157MPa. Surface roughness and residual stress of the nitinol after conventional polishing were $0.385{\mu}mRa$ and -205.15MPa. Surface roughness and residual stress of sandpaper and EP nitinol were $1.071{\mu}mRa$, -143.157MPa. The result shows that the EP process is a residual stress free process that eliminates the residual stress on the surface while eliminating the deformed layer remaining on the surface through composite surface machining rather than single surface machining. The EP process can be used for biomaterials such as nitinol and be applied to polishing of wafers and various fields.
