Avaliação da viabilidade técnica de pasta abrasiva à base de óleos vegetais de babaçu e moringa oleifera na usinagem sustentável por fluxo abrasivo

Abstract

The current scenario presents economic, political, and environmental challenges. Considering technological development, there is a need for adjustments in manufacturing processes, aiming for positive, sustainable impacts and cost reduction without compromising the quality of products and services. In machining, there are factors unfavorable to the use of fluids, including cost, danger to the operator's health, risks to the environment, and improper disposal of this material, in addition to the increasing severity of legislation, which makes it essential to seek more environmentally friendly alternatives to replace traditional fluids. In this sense, some products require a high-quality surface finish, which necessitates high-precision technologies such as abrasive flow machining (AFM), capable of machining parts with complex geometries employing an abrasive paste that contains fluids in its composition. A technical evaluation of the Abrasive Flow Machining (AFM) process was carried out, whose vegetable oils from Babassu and Moringa Oleifera are part of a low-cost abrasive paste formulation to replace commonly used petroleum-based fluids. Test specimens made of SAE 1045 steel, 6061-T6 aluminum, and C-360 CLA brass were subjected to AFM under the same conditions, using a composite abrasive media that had in its composition silicon carbide (SiC) and the vegetable oils of Babassu and Moringa Oleifera. For this purpose, the abrasive media was formulated and produced; then, the test specimens underwent AFM with different numbers of cycles (20, 60, and 120) according to the experimental design. The analyses of surface roughness (Ra), mass variation, and microscopic surface analysis demonstrate that the results of this work contribute to a better understanding of the intrinsic phenomena of different materials when subjected to the abrasive flow machining (AFM) process using vegetable-based abrasive pastes. AFM could machine the surface of all materials despite the distinct behavior. It is assessed that this distinct behavior is related to the type of abrasive used and the number of cycles. It is not related to the vegetable fluids used in the production of the abrasive media.