Development of Polishing on Small Mold and Die with Complex Shape

Abstract

Recently, mirror-like surface on a mold and a die was required for adding high quality on the most products. Particularly, as the processing of the mirror-like surface on the mold or the die with small and complex shape is difficult, the processing is performed a very long time by polishing of the skilled worker. Automatic polishing for the products is very difficult. Therefore the polishing on a small mold or a die with complex shape was developed and evaluated. The small polishing tool was firstly developed for the experiment. A small ball head of epoxy resin is bonded on the tip of a thin pipe and diamond grain is included in the ball. Diameter of the ball is less than 1.0 mm. The process for making the head, the polishing method and the optimum polishing condition are investigated in several experiments. The polishing tool is installed in the spindle of the CNC milling machine. This system was evaluated for processing the mirror-like surface on the small parts with complex shape. It is concluded from the results that the tool and the polishing system developed was effective for processing the mirror-like on the surface of the small parts with complex shape, and optimum polishing condition was also cleared.