The Advantage of Electropolishing with Pulsed Direct Current
December 2004
The Advantage of Electropolishing with Pulsed Direct Current
Dr.-Ing. Magnus Buhlert, Dipl.-Ing. Andreas Rettinghaus, Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Hinte, and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Visser (em), University of Bremen
It is well known that smooth and shining metal surfaces can be made by electropolishing, an electrochemical removal process. During electropolishing, profile tops are removed faster than valleys. The resulting surface is smooth, corrosion-resistant and easy to clean. The manufacturing process is used in medical engineering and chemical engineering. VenkatachalamCll and Labarga(2l showed that
surfaces get even smoother by using pulsated direct current than those achieved by conventional electropolishing with non-pulsated direct current. Our experimental results show that very smooth surfaces occur in defined frequency ranges and in the case of specific impulse times.