Abstract
Recently, electroless nickel, with its excellent properties, has been used in X-ray and Neutron optics. It has the advantages of higher hardness, better wear resistance and corrosion resistance which are better than most of metal materials. By containing some phosphorus content, this material performs a good machinability with both diamond cuttting and polishing. Also, since it has a amorphous structure, super-smooth surface roughness could be obtained. So in fact, it shows a great potential to replace glass material in X-ray and Neutron mirror fabrication. However, the research on polishing of electroless nickel is not enough so that the polishing process could not be done in a stable and efficient way. This paper presents a fundamental work on the investigation of polishing of electroless nickel, aiming at searching a suitable polishing condition for electroless nickel. The material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness which represents polishing characteristics well are examined by using different abrasives with different grain sizes, polishing pad and polishing pressure. From the experiment results, suitable polishing conditions are selected which will be used in rough polishing and fine polishing to achieve super-smooth surface with high polishing efficiency.
