SUMMARY
Slender ring-shaped parts, such as mechanical seals, experience elastic deformation due to workholding and cutting loads applied in face turning. Workholding loads contribute to part position errors, and machining loads contribute to surface form errors. Surface form errors often require finishing operations to ensure part geometry meets required dimensional tolerances. Finishing operations are time consuming and environmentally unfriendly, and their removal from the manufacturing process can reduce both production time and cost. Thus, it is desirable to understand the contribution of workholding and machining loads to elastic deformation during turning to minimize surface form errors and improve part quality. This thesis presents a method for the prediction of final surface profile variation for face turning of non-uniform rings. An analytical model was developed to predict the final peak-to-valley surface profile variation of a workpiece. The model is a superposition of several key factors that affect final surface profile variation: initial surface profile variation, elastic deformation due to workholding, material removal during machining, workpiece deflection due to cutting loads, and elastic recovery due to unclamping. Finite element analysis was carried out to relax some of the analytical model assumptions and provide a more accurate prediction of the final surface profile variation. A series of experiments was performed to validate the analytical and finite element models. The first series of experiments examined the peak-to-valley surface profile variations of a set of cobalt alloy rings throughout a facing operation. The second series of experiments characterized the clamping force produced by a three-jaw chuck. The third series of experiments measured cutting forces applied to the rings during facing. Analytical and finite element results correspond well with experimental observations, with average relative errors of 11.6% and 7.2% respectively.