Manufacturing of Structured Surface by Grinding Technology

Given the current demand for surfaces with non-polished morphology like structured surface that enhance its tribological properties, providing a method with minimal production cost and high performance has attracted attention. The present study focuses on presenting a new method for producing structured surfaces with hydrophobic performance. In this method, using the grinding process with a special grinding wheel, an attempt has been made to produce these widely used surfaces. By modifying the topography of the wheel surface and changing the arrangement of abrasive particles from random to arranged distribution with the diamond particles in predefined locations, an attempt was made to design and manufacture a special grinding wheel for the production of structured surfaces. A segment with 1*1 cm2 including diamond particles with mesh size of 40/50 were manufactured during the electroplating process in a nickel bath medium and by installing the segment on the wheel hub and performing the grinding process with this developed wheel, surfaces containing continuous and discontinuous scratches with the same geometry were produced. Static contact angle test for the unstructured surface was about 37 degrees that improved to 141 degrees with the structured surface, which is an impressive improvement.