EVALUATION OF FORCES, TOOL WEAR AND SURFACE FINISH DURING ORTHOGONAL MACHINING AISI 1020 STEEL IN THREE CUTTING ENVIRONMENTS

A large statistically designed orthogonal tube turning experiment measuring the forces, tool wear and surface finish involved in machining of AISI 1020 steel under four different cutting environments. The environments studied were nitrogen and cold compressed air against dry machining. Each data run consisted of one minute cutting time at two different feeds of 0.002"/rev. and 0.004"/rev. at a constant depth of cut of 0.125" width of cut using High speed steel tool material inserts. Post-mortem analysis was carried out under a Keyance microscope to evaluate the wear on the rake face. The cutting force and the thrust force are collected during the machining process with a dynamometer and the data is further processed using Labview software. The surface finish on the work piece after the cutting process is also evaluated based on the average roughness measurement taken from a contact type profilometer. The advantages of using such gaseous cutting fluids are discussed.