Contribution on Taguchi's Method Application on the Surface Roughness Analysis in End Milling Process on 7136 Aluminium Alloy

Abstract

The resulting surface quality after the cutting process is one of the most important characteristics of product quality and also the most frequent customer requirement. Previous research was focused on the effect investigation of machining parameters: cutting speed [1] and feed per tooth [2] on surface roughness. This paper is in itself a continuation of a previous research [3], in which, with Taguchi's method it was determined the level of influence of the cutting parameters on surface roughness of 7136 aluminium alloy in end milling process. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of Taguchi's method use to analyse the surface roughness of 7136 aluminium alloy in end milling process. To conduct the experiments, three cutting parameters were used: cutting speed, feed per tooth and cutting depth. To analyse the surface quality, the surface roughness Ra (the arithmetic average of the absolute values) was measured. It was determined the recommended configuration regarding the optimum values of each machining parameter and the interactions between them, in order to obtain the better cutting process performance and to reduce the surface roughness sensitivity to uncontrollable factors. Based on a full factorial experiment were confirmed the obtained results by applying the Taguchi's method. Final results are a starting point for further research.