Investigating the Effect of Tic Coating Layer on the Surface Roughness of Tungsten Carbide Cutting Tools Using Taguchi Design

Abstract

In this study, external longitudinal turning operation was performed on (AISI 1020) steel to examine the influences of coating of the cutting tool on the machined surface roughness. The cutting tools used were coated and uncoated cemented carbide inserts. The tests are performed at four spindle speeds (80, 315, 500, and 800) rpm, at each of which two feed rates (0.2 and 0.5mm/rev) and two depth of cut (0.5 and 0.7mm) were used. Taguchi design of experiments (DOE) with a designed mathematical predictive model was used to investigate the effect of the coating layer and determine the machining conditions for minimum surface roughness. Accordingly, a suitable mixed orthogonal array L16 (3*4) was selected. The results showed that the surface roughness produced by using TiC coated inserts for identical machining conditions was lower than that produced due to uncoated tool by 41% to 53%. Regression analysis showed that the non-linear quadratic polynomial equation appears to be more suitable for representing the relation of spindle speed, feed rate, and depth of cut with the surface roughness. Taguchi method and the designed mathematical model had been used to predict the optimal cutting conditions. A confirmation test for the obtained results verified that the designed Taguchi experiments and the designed model successfully investigated the effect of the coating on the surface roughness. Data fit ver.9 and Mtb14 software had been employed to achieve the object of the presented work.