Investigation of effects of dry and near dry machining on AISI D2 steel using vegetable oil

Millions of gallons of metal working fluids are used each day in industry for cutting, milling, drilling, stamping, and grinding. But Metal working fluids has been found causing very much damage to employee health and environmental pollution. High production volume, the large number of occupationally-exposed workers, and the lack of carcinogenicity and chronic toxicology data of metal working fluids demands a careful scrutiny. The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of dry and near dry machining (NDM) on AISI D2 steel by using an environmental friendly vegetable oil as a lubricant and to completely eliminate the mineral and petroleum based harmful lubricants from turning process. The high carbon high chromium AISI D2 steel was turned at various feed and speed combinations by using Tungsten carbide insert (CNMG12408). The results have been compared with dry machining and near dry machining. The experimental results indicate that near dry machining shows promising results over dry machining in terms of work–tool interface temperature and surface roughness. In order to obtain a good cutting performance by NDM, it is considered that at higher speeds better surface finish properties are obtained. Therefore, it is suggested that near dry machining, provides environment friendliness, cleaner production and can also help to improve the desirable machinability characteristics up to certain extent.