Study on the influence of fluid application parameters on tool vibration and cutting performance during turning of hardened steel

Recently the concept of hard turning has gained much attention in the metal cutting industry. In hard turning, multiple operations can be performed in single step, thereby it replaces the traditional process cycle. But it involves very large quantities of cutting fluid. Procurement, storage and disposal of cutting fluid involve expenses and environmental problem. Pure dry turning is a solution to this problem as it does not require any cutting fluid at all. But pure dry turning requires ultra hard cutting tools and extremely rigid machine tools, and also it is difficult to implement in the existing shop floor as the machine tool may not be rigid enough to support hard turning. In this context, turning with minimal fluid application is a viable alternative wherein, extremely small quantities of cutting fluid are introduced at critical contact zones as high velocity pulsing slugs, so that for all practical purposes it resembles pure dry turning and at the same time free from all the problems related to large scale use of cutting fluid as in conventional wet turning. In this study, fluid application parameters that characterize the minimal fluid application scheme were optimized and its effect on cutting performance and tool vibration was studied. From the results, it was observed that minimal fluid application in the optimized mode brought forth low vibration levels and better cutting performance.