Experimental Investigations in Turning of Steel Alloy Under Different Lubrication Conditions

Abstract

The present paper reports the experimental study of using vegetable oil as cutting fluid in machining of EN 353 Steel alloy in order to minimize the cutting temperature under different lubrication conditions, i.e., dry, flooded, and minimum quantity lubrication conditions. The performance characteristics are studied by considering different input parameters—cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut, type of tool, and different lubrication conditions at three levels. The cutting fluid used in machining is vegetable oil based, prepared with the composition of coconut oil, oleic acid, and triethanolamine. The experiments are performed based on Taguchi’s robust design methodology and after machining, the results were compared among the dry, flooded, and MQL conditions. From the experiment results, it is concluded that the optimal and best combination for minimizing cutting temperature are cutting speed at 700 rpm, feed rate at 0.2 mm/rev, depth of cut at 0.5 mm, and PVD-coated tool. Machining under the flooded condition is found to be better than dry and MQL condition, but a very small difference in the results are observed between MQL and flooded condition, hence it can be stated that MQL is advantageous compared to flooded as it reduces the flow of lubricant in terms of ml to l. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) suggests that the selected factors found to be significant and the corresponding interactions, i.e., type of lubrication conditions with cutting speed (rpm), feed rate (mm/rev), depth of cut (mm), and type of tool coated are also found to be significant. It is also concluded that the effect of lubrication condition is more followed by depth of cut, cutting speed, feed rate, and type of tool.