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.