Surface finish and surface hardness of the components play vital role in quality of products. In most of the conventional finish machining process only surface finish will be improved, but improvement on surface hardness is less considerable. More over all finishing process are metal cutting in nature and introduces tensile stresses in the surface layer. But instead of tensile stress, if compressive stresses are introduced in surface layer, it will improve various properties of components like fatigue strength. Therefore the requirement in finishing an industrial component is that the process should improve surface finish, surface hardness and induce compressive stresses in the surface layer. A process of finishing by surface plastic deformation can meet this requirement.

One of such process, which was in use since long time is “Burnishing”. Even though the process is an old one its process parameters were not fully established, because of which it is not finding wide range of industrial application. In Burnishing, the surface layer will be plastically deformed with the help of a Ball or Roller which is harder than the work material. The process parameters include Burnishing Force, Burnishing Speed, Burnishing Feed, and Number of Tool Passes.

In the present study external burnishing tool is used to perform roller burnishing process on EN 8 alloy steel to study the surface properties variation by varying the burnishing parameters like force, speed, feed and number passes.