Environmentally conscious machining of Inconel 718: surface roughness, tool wear, and material removal rate assessment

摘要

Flood cooling is a typical strategy used in the machining of difficult-to-cut materials where high temperatures are produced. Several environmental and health concerns are associated with the cutting fluids employed during this technique. Vegetable oil-based fluids appear to be the best substitute to conventional mineral/synthetic oils due to their environmentally friendly, biodegradable, renewable, and less toxic properties. Therefore, this paper attempts to establish an environmentally conscious, flood-cooling alternative through replacing conventional fluids with a synthetic vegetable ester-based (Mecagreen 450) biodegradable oil to investigate the machinability aspects of Inconel 718. In addition to the cooling environment, cutting speed (v(s)), feed per tooth (f(z)), and axial depth of cut (a(p)) have been used as control variables. A Taguchi L-9 array has been selected for the design of experiments (DOE). Parametric effects and microscopic analyses have been carried out to investigate the three response parameters, i.e., surface roughness (R-a), tool wear, and material removal rate (MRR). Tool wear analysis is further supplemented with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS).