Depending on the expanding application areas of glass fiber reinforced composite materials, quality machining of such materials also receives increasing interest. However, since the cutting tools used for machining such composites generally have standard geometric properties, both the life of the cutting tool and the quality of the machined composite workpiece are adversely affected by. In this study, the performance and the most optimum drilling geometries of untreated (UT) and cryo-treated&tempered (DCT&T) HSS cutting tools used for machining of fiber-reinforced glass-epoxy composites were investigated. Moreover, Taguchi experimental design was employed to reduce the number of experiments, and also the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis were performed. Furthermore, XRD analysis and microhardness tests were applied to UT and DCT&T HSS cutting tools. From the highest and lowest delamination factor (Fd) values obtained using UT and DCT&T HSS drills, it was understood that DCT&T HSS drills achieved better results by 0.8% and 0.7%, respectively. According to average surface roughness (Ra) values obtained, the performances of DCT&T HSS drills were 14.76% (for the highest Ra value) and 2.69% (for the lowest Ra value), better than UT HSS drills. When the highest and lowest cutting force values were compared, it was seen that the cutting force values obtained using DCT&T HSS drills were 24.54% and 16.15% less than the cutting force values obtained using UT HSS drills, respectively. According to the S/N ratios for the cutting forces, the most optimum geometries of the cutting tool were found to be 128° point angle, 33° helix angle and 8° clearance angle, respectively. With respect to S/N ratios for Fd values, the most optimum geometries of the cutting tool were found to be 118° point angle, 26° helix angle and 8° clearance angle, respectively. Based on S/N ratios for Ra values, the most optimum geometries of the cutting tool were found to be 128° point angle, 26° helix angle and 8° clearance angle, respectively. On the other hand, as a result of the regression analysis, R2 values obtained over 90% show that the regression models are quite successful. Besides, it was observed (from SEM and thermal camera images) that the epoxy resins in the chips produced at high spindle speeds melted because of high temperature, which indicated that the integrity of the composite workpieces started to deteriorate.
Read full abstract