EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS OF VEGETABLE & MINERAL OIL PERFORMANCE DURING MACHINING OF EN-31 STEEL WITH MINIMUM QUANTITY LUBRICATION

Abstract

Machining with Conventional flood lubrication is a common practice in the industries for reducing friction, heat and cutting power. The type of cutting fluid used during machining play important role in enhancing the machining performance if and only if it is selected, applied, handled and disposed in better way. Cutting fluids often poses hazard to man, environment, machine and material. It sometimes also becomes uneconomical; when application method, flow rate and cost of cutting fluid are remain unattended or underestimated. In Conventional flood lubrication a large quantity of lubricant is applied continuously at the tool chip interface does not remove heat effectively as much required because of poor penetration and obstruction from the chip. Therefore this system is becoming uneconomical for machining and unsuitable for environment. On the other hand wastage disposal of this large quantity of cutting fluid (petroleum based) is becoming problematic. Therefore the present study has been conducted by Vegetable based Minimum quantity Lubrication to reduce or to minimize hazards caused by Conventional flood lubrication. The Results of surface roughness obtained during Turning of EN-31 Steel with Minimum quantity lubrication of both mineral oil and vegetable are compared with each other and indicates that the surface roughness of vegetable oil is close proximity with mineral oil. Index Terms: Minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), Vegetable oil, Mineral oil, Surface roughness, EN-31 Steel