Flushing Strategies for High Performance, Efficient and Environmentally Friendly Cutting

The rising requirements in cutting operations for higher performance and higher efficiency respecting also environmental phenomena are influencing the use of different coolants and flushing conditions. In machining difficult-to-cut materials, in particular high-temperature materials, conventional emulsion cooling is unsuitable due to the insufficient cooling effect and the energy and cost intensive equipment required. For this reason new cooling and lubricating strategies have to be developed and investigated. Using hybrid processes, mainly by superposition of various cooling strategies, offers the potential to extend the existing technological process limits of conventional cutting processes. The paper introduces theoretical, experimental and simulation results with various innovative cooling strategies, such as high-pressure cooling, cryogenic cooling and aerosol dry lubrication in grooving, turning and drilling and derives the appropriate field of application for each flushing strategy.