Modeling of Thrust Force in Drilling of Plain Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) Composite Panels Using RSM

Abstract

Wood composites are manufactured from wood powders, wood wastes and smaller diameter trees. The good qualities such as less weight, free from defects and low cost increases the use of wood composite products than the products made from solid wood. Medium density fiberboard (MDF) is a wood based composite widely used in wood working applications because of their high dimensional stability, good surface characteristics etc. Machining processes involves in the manufacturing of wood composite products. Among the machining processes the drilling is an important process in the assembly of final products. The machining conditions, cutting parameters, tool geometry, work material, etc., are the deciding factors in getting the quality of drilled surface and reduced drilling damages like delamination, surface roughness, etc. The surface characteristics and defects are significantly affected by the cutting forces developed during drilling. The drilling experiments are planned using Taguchi design of experiments. The present study investigates the influence of input control parameters using Taguchi method and the mathematical model developed based on response surface methodology (RSM) on the thrust force induced in drilling. The adequacy of the response surface model is checked with analysis of variance (ANOVA). From the results it is found that the high spindle speed with low feed rate reduces the thrust force developed in drilling of plain MDF panels