Experimental Study On Friction Aided Jet Electrodeposition

Electroforming is a precision manufacturing technology for forming metal parts using electrodeposition method. Traditional electroforming process can get electroforming layer with a lot of special features, but most of the layers have nonuniform organization, the properties are not stable enough, and there are pinholes, nodules, mechanical pitting and other defects in electroforming layer. In order to improve the electroforming quality and explore the new method of electroforming parts rapid prototyping, this paper presents friction aided jet electrodeposition technology, adding friction aided device in the electroforming process, cathode is rotated by the driven of motor, and the cathode surface were frictioned continually by the friction aided device, in order to achieve electroforming rapid precision prototyping of rotary part .The main work which have done as follows:(1) A friction aided jet electrodeposition system has been builted based on CNC jet machine.(2) Ni-costing layer were maked by friction aided jet electrodeposition technology, and the surface morphology and organization structure of the layer were detected and analyzed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and other methods.The research shows that friction aided jet electrodeposition technology has greatly enhance electroforming speed, eliminate the surface pinholes, nodules, mechanical pitting and other defects effectively, and obtain the value of Ra of outside surface of cast reaches 0.096 m. The Nickel electroforming layer have dense organization, uniform grains, the grain size between 5 ~ 40nm, the hardness was increased and there are large changes in magnetic properties.(3) The experiment study the effection of current density, cathode rotation speed, nozzle height, jet velocity, nozzle size and other parameters for the microstructure and properties of friction aided jet electrodeposition of nickel cast layer, and optimize the process parameters.(4) Making some nickel cast layers which change with deposition time using friction aided jet electrodeposition system, and study the effection of friction aided device for the microstructure in the thicker increaseing process of casting layer. The analysis shows: Added friction aided device, casting layer quality can be maintained in good condition with the time increasing. Finally, casting layer with 1mm thickness were prepared with optimized parameters, and the surface is still bright and smooth.