Experimental Investigation to Study the Effect of Solid Lubricant on Performance Characteristics in Turning Al-6061

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2013 in the subject Engineering - Mechanical Engineering, grade: 0, , course: B Tech, language: English, abstract: The aluminium alloys are widely employed in the aeronautical, aerospace and automotive industries due to the fact they provide good heat conductivity, corrosion resistance, high strength to weight ratio even at high temperatures. Cutting fluids are still widely used due to the fact that these materials can commonly show problems associated with the heat generation. However, the growing social preoccupation towards environmental conservation has made it necessary to develop cleaner production technologies as dry machining, in which no cutting fluids are employed. Solid lubricant assisted machining is a novel concept to control the machining zone temperature without polluting the environment. The surface quality of the machined parts is one of the most important product quality characteristics and one of the most frequent customer requirements. The present study focuses on investigating the effect of boric acid powder as solid lubricant on surface quality as well as cutting forces. Experiments have been conducted utilizing Taguchi's L9 orthogonal array. The influence of machining parameters viz. cutting speed, feed, rake angle and tool nose radius has been investigated. The objective of this research is to find the optimum cutting parameters based on surface roughness, cutting temperature and tool wear.