Ultra-Precision Diamond Processing Of Biodegradable Az31 Alloy For Orthopedic Application

The biodegradable magnesium (Mg) alloys have been acknowledged amongst the top potential biomedical materials for developing different orthopedic devices. Indeed, the processed Mg alloys’ surface integrity shows a substantial contribution to the resulting biomedical applications’ performance. In this paper, the effect of various influential process parameters of an ultra-precision diamond turning (UPDT), such as rotational frequency of spindle, tool overhanging (TOH), feed rate (FR), and depth-of-cut (DOC) on the chip formation, shearing mechanism, and surface finish of the biodegradable Mg AZ31 alloy have been studied. The resulting chips’ analysis of the different processing parameters has been studied to investigate the involved shearing mechanism. Besides, a relationship between the resulting surface topography and the consequences of UPDT-parameters on skewness (𠒮sk) and kurtosis (𠒮ku) was studied. The statistical analysis highlighted that the FR and TOH significantly influenced the surface roughness of the Mg AZ31 alloys at a 95% confidence level. Therefore, being statistically dominating, the morphology of the formed chip has also been influenced by FR and TOH’s parametric levels. The UPDT-processed Mg-alloy possessed a nano-finished surface that acted as hydrophobic and could prevent the surface from corrosion. In the light of experimental findings, the UPDT-processed Mg-alloy can be used for orthopedic screws and plates applications.