Nitinol (NiTi), an alloy of nickel and titanium, wires are an important biomedical material that has been used in catheter tubes, guidewires, stents, and other surgical instruments. As such wires are temporarily or permanently inserted inside the human body, their surfaces need to be smoothed and cleaned in order to prevent wear, friction, and adhesion of bacteria. In this study, NiTi wire samples of micro-scale diameters (i.e., Ø 200 μm and Ø 400 μm) were polished by an advanced magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) process using a nanoscale polishing method. Furthermore, bacterial adhesion (i.e., Escherichia coli (E. coli), and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus)) to the initial and final surfaces of NiTi wires were investigated and compared in order to assess the impact of surface roughness on bacterial adhesion to the surfaces of NiTi wires. The finding revealed that the surfaces of NiTi wires were clean and smooth with a lack of particle impurities and toxic components on the final surface polished using the advanced MAF process. The surface roughness Ra values of the Ø 200 μm and Ø 400 μm NiTi wires were smoothly enhanced to 20 nm and 30 nm from the 140 nm and 280 nm initial surface roughness values. Importantly, polishing the surfaces of a biomedical material such as NiTi wire to nano-level roughness can significantly reduce bacterial adhesion on the surface by more than 83.48% in the case of S. aureus, while in the case of E. coli was more than 70.67%.

Ceramics are advanced engineering materials in which have been broadly used in numerous industries due to their superior mechanical and physical properties. For application, the industries require that the ceramic products have high-quality surface finishes, high dimensional accuracy, and clean surfaces to prevent and minimize thermal contact, adhesion, friction, and wear. Ceramics have been classified as difficult-to-machine materials owing to their high hardness, and brittleness. Thus, it is extremely difficult to process them with conventional finishing processes. In this review, trends in the development of non-conventional finishing processes for the surface finishing of difficult-to-machine ceramics are discussed and compared to better comprehend the key finishing capabilities and limitations of each process on improvements in terms of surface roughness. In addition, the future direction of non-conventional finishing processes is introduced. This review will be helpful to many researchers and academicians for carrying out additional research related to the surface finishing techniques of ceramics for applications in various fields.

In this paper, we propose a new ultra-high-precision magnetic abrasive finishing method for wire material which is considered to be difficult with the existing finishing process. The processing method uses a rotating magnetic field system with unbonded magnetic abrasive type. It is believed that this process can efficiently perform the ultra-high-precision finishing for producing a smooth surface finish and removing a diameter of wire material. For such a processing improvement, the following parameters are considered; rotational speed of rotating magnetic field, vibration frequency of wire material, and unbonded magnetic abrasive grain size. In order to evaluate the performance of the new finishing process for the wire material, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) 1085 steel wire was used as the wire workpiece. The experimental results showed that the original surface roughness of AISI 1085 steel wire was enhanced from 0.25 µm to 0.02 µm for 60 s at 800 rpm of rotational speed. Also, the performance of the removed diameter was excellent. As the result, a new ultra-high-precision magnetic abrasive finishing using a rotating magnetic field with unbonded magnetic abrasive type could be successfully adopted for improving the surface roughness and removing the diameter of AISI 1085 steel wire material.

This research proposes an optimized magnetic abrasive machining process that uses an ultra-high-speed system to perform precision machining on a workpiece. The system can process several microns of material, either for machining surface roughness or for machining a workpiece for a precise micro-diameter. The stainless steel workpieces have been machined using an ultra-high-speed magnetic abrasive machining (UHSMAM) process. The experiments were performed analyzing the accuracy of the machined workpiece diameter, using response surface methodology. The results obtained after machining have been analyzed to determine the effect of different process parameters such as machining speed, machining time, machining frequencies, inert gas in/out, magnetic pole types, and magnetic abrasive mesh size for the individual workpiece, as well as to study various interaction effects that may significantly affect the machining performance of the process. The obtained outcomes of the analysis for different workpieces have been critically compared to understand the effect of the considered process parameters based on the resulting mechanical properties. Regression analysis was used to confirm the stability of the micro-diameter and the processing efficiency. Atomic force microscope (AFM) micrographs were also obtained to study the surface morphology of the precision-machined workpiece.

This study proposes a new wire magnetic abrasive finishing (WMAF) process for finishing 316L SUS wire using ecological magnetic abrasive tools. 316L SUS wire is a biomaterial that is generally used in medical applications (e.g., coronary stent, orthodontics, and implantation). In medical applications of this material, a smooth surface is commonly required. Therefore, a new WMAF process using ecological magnetic abrasive tools was developed to improve the surface quality and physical properties of this biomaterial. In this study, the WMAF process of 316L SUS wire is separated into two finishing processes: (i) WMAF with ecological magnetic abrasive tools, and (ii) WMAF with industrial magnetic abrasive tools. The ecological magnetic abrasive tools consist of cuttlefish bone abrasives, olive oil, electrolytic iron powder, and diamond abrasive paste. The finishing characteristics of the two types of abrasive tools were also explored for different input parameters (i.e., vibrating magnetic field and rotating magnetic field). The results show that ecological magnetic abrasive tools can improve the initial surface roughness of 316L SUS wire from 0.23 µm to 0.06 µm. It can be concluded that ecological magnetic abrasive tools can replace industrial magnetic abrasive tools.

This paper describes the development of a movable manual electromagnet with an adjustable flux density to improve the inner surface smoothness of a cone pipe using a magnetic abrasive finishing process. This method is fabricated to reduce further the roughness of the internal surface of the conic shape, which was modeled as an electromagnet oscillating in the work zone with a ball roller. Statistically significant improvement in the process was achieved using unbounded magnetic abrasive, light oil, flux density, controlled feed rate, and constant rotational speed in the experiment. The ball transfer equipped on the top of the electromagnet pole plays an essential role in spinning over the outer cone pipe during the experiment and helps reduce friction while the workpiece fluctuates. Furthermore, the flux density can be changed to control the magnetic force and select the most acceptable option. In addition, a procedure for finishing has been designed for finishing a cone pipe, and we sought to understand how the flux density affects the material in removal exterior roughness. As a result, the flux density is clarified, and a higher flux density achieves excellent removal of surface roughness of the inner deformed pipe from 1.68 μm to 0.39 μm within 24 min.