COMPARISON BETWEEN DRY AND WET MACHINING OF STAINLESS STEEL N. I. Galanis1, D. E. Manolakos1, N. M.

Vaxevanidis2
1. School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece 2. Department of Mechanical Engineering Educators, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Greece

ABSTRACT Cutting fluids (CFs) in machining operations help to remove the heat generated during cutting; to achieve better tool life and surface finish and to facilitate the flushing of chips. On the other hand, machining without the use of any cutting fluid (dry) is becoming increasingly important due to concern regarding safety and environmental legislation. In the present paper we report the dry and wet machining of AISI 422 stainless steel rods on a CNC lathe. Cutting parameters were identical for both machining in order to achieve the direct comparison of the corresponding results. The main outputs monitored were the cutting tool temperature and the surface roughness. The influence of the main cutting parameters (cutting speed, feed and depth of cut) on the aforementioned outputs was studied. KEYWORDS: Dry machining, Tool Temperature, Surface Roughness, Cutting Parameters 1. INTRODUCTION Dry machining is ecologically desirable and it will be considered as a necessity for manufacturing enterprises in the near future. Industries will be compelled to consider dry machining to enforce environmental protection laws for occupational safety and health regulations. The advantages of dry machining include: non-pollution of the atmosphere (or water); no residue on the swarf which will be reflected in reduced disposal and cleaning costs; no danger to health; and it is non-injurious to skin and is allergy free. Moreover, it offers cost reduction in machining /1/. However in dry cutting operations, the friction and adhesion between chip and tool tend to be higher, which causes higher temperatures, higher wear rates and, consequently, shorter tool lives /2/. On the contrary, wet machining has the advantage of better part quality and less tool wear. Cutting fluids have been introduced into the cutting process with the purpose to improve the characteristics of the tribological processes which are always present on the contact surfaces between the tool and the workpiece. The use of cutting fluids increases the tool life, contributes to a more economical cutting speed and generally improves the efficiency of the production systems when taken as a whole /3/. In order to be widely applied, dry machining should achieve the same, or approximately the same part quality and tool life with the conservative, wet machining. This paper is focused on the comparison of these two material removals methods and the effect of the main cutting parameters such as cutting speed, feed and depth of cut in the surface quality and tool temperature developed during the cutting.
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Manufacturing Engineering (ICMEN), 1-3 October 2008, Chalkidiki, Greece Edited by Prof. K.-D. Bouzakis, Director of the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Manufacturing Engineering (), Aristoteles University of Thessaloniki and of the Fraunhofer Project Center Coatings in Manufacturing (PCCM), a joint initiative by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Published by: and PCCM

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2. CHARACTERISTICS OF DRY MACHINING The main functions of cutting lubricants are to reduce heat generation by reducing friction and to eliminate the exertion of unacceptable influences on the structure of the subsurface layer of the workpiece by absorbing and removing heat from the cutting area. In cutting operations, CF also have an important transport function for the removal of the chips. Thus efficient lubrication systems enable to high performance operations in practice. CF functions are not available in dry machining operations. This means that there is more friction and adhesion between tool and workpiece. Tools and workpieces are subjected to greater thermal load. This may result in higher levels of tool wear, e.g. in increased crater formation when steel materials are machined using uncoated carbides /4/. The temperature that produced on the cutting surface is due to 18% of the total thermal energy of the cutting procedure. The temperature is maximum in about halfway up the face of the tool and decreases as it goes in the inside edge of the insert /5/. It has been calculated that decreases about 80% from its peek value and the temperature high field is in the front edge of the tool in a depth of about 0.02mm /6/. However, dry cutting may also show positive effects such as thermal shock reduction and thus in the formation of comb-cracks. Higher machining temperatures influence also chip formation. This may results in both ribbon chips and snarl chips. When reliable control over chip formation is required, it may be necessary to use cutting inserts with especially adapted chip shaping grooves towards dry cutting. Higher part temperatures in dry cutting may affect form and dimensional accuracy and subsurface structure /4/. 3. EXPERIMENTAL METHOD AND PROCEDURE Selection of cutting variables The selection of cutting variables was based on the design of experiments methodology /7/. Eight experiments represent 23 factorial designs with added four points in the middle edges of the representation cube, Figure 1. Taking into account three different levels for each variable, as shown in Table 1, we take the experimental conditions for 12 experiments, shown in Table 2. Cutting variables were kept identical for both dry and wet machining.

Figure 1: Representation of a 23 factorial design with added parameters.

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Workpiece and cutting tool material. The test material was a rod 422 Stainless steel with hardness 321HV and machined on a CNC lathe, showing in Figure 2. A coated cutting tool with specification: DNMG 110404 - M3 with TP 2000 coated grade was used for the manufacturing process. The coated grade code means that over the carbide body, there are four coating layers of Ti (C, N), Al2O3, Ti (C, N) and TiN.

Figure 2: Material rod and cutting tool inside CNC lathe. Table 1: Level independent variables. Factor, coding (unit) Cutting speed, Uk (m/min) Feed, f (mm/rev) Depth of cut, d (mm) Low (-1) 252 0.2 0.5 Centre (0) 273 0.35 0.75 High (1) 306 0.5 1

Measuring techniques The tool temperature was measured during the procedure with the help of a laser pyrometer with a range of measurements from -30 to 1200 C. The laser beams were focused on the back edge of the cutting insert, meaning that the temperature measured was the 20% of the temperature in the cutting edge. After the finishing of the procedure, the surface roughness (Ra) was measured with a stylus type roughness profilometer. The cut off length was set up to 0.25mm and there was taken the average of 10 measurements for each combination of the cutting variables.

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Table 2: Experimental conditions and results. No of Test 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Speed (m/min) 252 252 252 252 306 306 306 306 273 273 273 273 Feed (mm/rev) 0.2 0.2 0.5 0.5 0.2 0.2 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.2 0.2 Depth (mm) 0.5 1 0.5 1 0.5 1 0.5 1 0.5 1 0.5 1 X1 -1 -1 -1 -1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 Coding X2 -1 -1 1 1 -1 -1 1 1 1 1 -1 -1 X3 -1 1 -1 1 -1 1 -1 1 -1 1 -1 1 Ra(m) Ra(m) T(C) T(oC) Wet Dry Wet Dry 1.6 1.6 25 73 1.6 2.8 25 74 8.6 9.6 25 68 9.2 10.6 30 90 1.2 1.6 30 80 2.5 2.4 28 101 7.7 9.7 26 75 8.8 10.2 30 120 2.8 9.2 29 74 9.2 11.6 30 93 2.2 2.6 25 70 2.2 2.4 25 68

4. RESULTS After the complete of experiments and measurements, there were taken the results shown in Table 2 for surface roughness (Ra) and tool temperature. It can be exported that in general for wet machining both surface roughness and tool temperature, had smaller values than the dry one, as it is expected from the mentioned above. On the contrary there are four experimental conditions where surface roughness is almost the same for both cutting routes, and moreover, for one condition (test no 6 in Table2) dry machining results in better surface roughness than the wet one. This is very important, because it fulfills the first requirement of comparison between dry and wet machining, that there were obtained results similar to operation where CF is used /8/. For the second requirement it is important the tool temperature, which is very high in dry machining, as results show. This affects the wear of simple tool and makes them incapable for manufacturing after a small number of cuttings. Surface Roughness In order to examine better the results and to have useful inferences, there are the results separated into groups and plotted on graphs. So for surface roughness there were constructed three graphs, Figure 3 for surface roughness at 252 m/min cutting speed, Figure 4 at 273 m/min cutting speed and Figure 5 at 306 m/min cutting speed. It is evident that as the cutting speed is increased the surface roughness become better and particularly in the smaller values of feed rate and depth of cut, something which is expected. The effect of cutting speed can be attributed to the fact that as speed increases, the shear angle increase and the friction coefficient decrease. This phenomenon in combination with the CFs gives a very good surface quality /5/. Although there are a couple of exceptions, which might be caused from a small error during the measurement, the basic expiry is the betterment of surface roughness. In comparison with the dry one, wet cutting results 5-10% lower surface roughness values, for the same conditions, in the majority of the experiments. Moreover there are a couple of conditions where 50% smaller value were measured. Furthermore, and this is the most important thing in these graphs, there are two points were the results are equal for both machining methods, or the dry one has better surface quality than the wet machining. The last one can been seen in Figure 5, at the second occasion were the feed rate was 0.2 mm/rev the cutting depth 1mm and the cutting speed was the biggest of the three, i.e. 306m/min.

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Figure 3: Graph of surface roughness at 252m/min cutting speed.

It can be concluded then that the dry machining can achieve the same or better surface quality for high cutting speeds, over 270m/min, and for low cutting depths and feed rates, approximately 0.2-1mm cutting depth and feed rate depending upon the geometry of the cutting tool insert.

Figure 4: Graph of surface roughness at 273m/min cutting speed.

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Figure 5: Graph of surface roughness at 306m/min cutting speed.

Tool temperature As it was expected, the tool temperature was higher in dry cutting than in wet one and also was increased with the increase of the cutting speed. Cutting speed has a major influence on temperature. As the speed increases, there is a little time for the heat to be dissipated and hence temperature rises. The chip is a good heat sink, in that it carries away most of the heat generated /5/. From the rest amount of heat, the most of it is carried away by the tool. In order to be better examined there were also for temperature graphs plotted, Figure 6, showing surface temperature at 252 m/min cutting speed, Figure 7, showing surface temperature at 273 m/min cutting speed and Figure 8, at 306 m/min cutting speed. For wet machining the temperature was in the range of 26 30 C, which was the temperature of CF spreading all over the cutting surface with pressure from the machine pump, and absorbing the temperature from tool, workpiece and chip. In the dry machining the temperature was measured in the back surface of the insert from 68 up to 120 C. That means that the temperature in the front face of the insert ranged approximately from 650 to 900 C, a temperature field which is definitely detrimental for tool life thing that increases aseptically toll wear factor. Particularly in Figure 8, at 306 m/min cutting speed and for the depth of 1mm, the highest temperatures in all the experiments were measured: 101 for 0.2 mm/rev feed rate and 120 for 0.5 mm/rev feed rate speed. According to the cutting parameters, high speed and big cutting depth implies high temperature in the process. Feed rate actually does not affect in so high level the alteration of the temperature. In comparison with the results of the surface roughness, the combination of the cutting parameters in such a way, to achieve the better surface quality, incurs greater thermal impact to the tool and to the workpiece. Furthermore, for an overview of view for the temperatures effect, when the used tool was examined after the end of the experiments, it was found that there has not been framed any crater in its cutting edge, however there were areas of diffusion where the coating had come in contact with the workpiece during the process under high temperatures.

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Figure 6: Graph of surface temperature at 252 m/min cutting speed.

Figure 7: Graph of surface temperature at 273 m/min cutting speed.

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Figure 8: Graph of surface temperature at 306 m/min cutting speed. 5. CONCLUSION This paper summarize the effect of the cutting parameters on the surface roughness and tool surface temperature, after turning process of AISI 422 stainless steel. With dry machining can be achieved the appropriate surface quality, choosing the accurate cutting conditions, which needs to be higher cutting speed and less feed rate speed. However, this selection has as result the high increase of the temperature, which acts on the cutting tool and affects its life by increasing the wear factor. In order to have best results, it is required the development of new materials and new coatings for the cutting tools. Combining these, it can be achieved that method, which is ecologically desirable; it is closer to the clean machining methods and it will become assuming in the future. 6. REFERENCES 1. 2. 3. Sreejith P. S., Ngoi B. K. A., Dry machining: Machining of the future, Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 101 (2000) 287-291. Anselmo E. D, Adilson J. O., Optimizing the use of dry cutting in rough turning steel operations, International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture, 44 (2004) 10611067. Sokovic M., Mijanovic K., Ecological aspects of the cutting fluids and its influence on quantifiable parameters of the cutting processes, Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 109 (2001) 181-189. Klocke F., Eisenblatter G., Dry Cutting, Annals of the ClRP, 42/2 (1997) 519-526. Kalpakjian S., Manufacturing Processes for Engineering Materials, Addison Wisley Longman Inc., Canada. (1997) zel T., Modelling of hard part machining: effect of insert edge preparation in CBN cutting tools, Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 141 (2003) 284293. Dabnun M. A., Hashmi M. S. J., El-Baradie M. A., Surface roughness prediction model by design of experiments for turning machinable glassceramic (Macor), Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 164165 (2005) 12891293. Kundrak J., Mamalis A. G., Gyani K., Markopoulos A., Environmentally friendly precision machining, Material and Manufacturing Process, 21 (2006) 2937.

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