Investigations on the Application of Minimum Quantity Solid Lubrication in Turning

Machining is the manufacturing process, capable of producing required shape and size by material removal. In recent times industries are striving to enhance the performance of machining processes. One of the problem associated with machining is the amount of heat generation as a result of friction between tool and workpiece. Heat generated may affect the quality of machined surface and tool wear. In order to control it, cutting fluid is applied in large quantity. The problem arises with the use of cutting fluid is its effect on worker’s health and environment. The present investigation is an attempt to explore the use the solid lubricants in machining as an alternative to cutting fluid. The work involves development of minimum quantity solid lubrication set up. Turning experiments has been performed by applying solid lubricants mixed with cutting fluid in minimum quantity. The performance of minimum quantity solid lubrication has been assessed in form of obtained surface finish, power consumption and tool wear during turning. Experimental findings discovered the superiority of minimum quantity solid lubrication over conventional cutting fluid and can be considered as cost effective and sustainable lubrication method.

Combined Extrusion-Forging: Simulation, Experimental and Microscopic Investigation of Axisymmetric Single Collar Collet Chuck Holder

Combined Extrusion-Forging process is a renowned metal forming method which serves as a pathway for manufacturing components of complex design. In that context processing a component with better mechanical and metallurgical properties can be enhanced by severe plastic deformation which processes the fine-grained materials formation in the product. These fine-grained materials achieved by SPD makes the component with superior quality. The novelty of the concept is to validate the presence of fine-grained materials at lower ram displacement. This paper presents the estimated forming load, metal flow pattern and alike, using aluminum 1072 as billet material for manufacturing SCCCH, along with micro-structural validation by experimental die-punch setup and simulation using modelling software DEFORM3D. Numerical analysis was also performed to estimate the forming load and metal flow patterns. Good number of experiments has been carried out at various punch movements to find out forming load and metal flow pattern. Microscopic analyses have been performed to validate the data with the results obtained from the experimentation. It was found that the numerical data was well validated with the experimental results. Further, Micro-hardness analysis was also performed. As the component was manufactured on application of heavy loads, the residual stress was also found to check the load carrying capacity of the component.

Ball Burnishing Under High Velocities Using a New Rolling Tool Concept

Ball burnishing is a process used to smooth rough surfaces. For not rotational symmetric parts, the process is typically conducted on milling machines. Since it is an incremental process, it is relatively time consuming. Therefore, a rolling tool is developed, which superposes the rotation of the milling spindle with the feed of the machine to increase the rolling velocity. In order to achieve constant rolling forces, hydrostatic ball burnishing tools are used. Within this work, the influence of this tool concept on the processing time as well as on the leveling of surface irregularities is investigated. This is achieved by a comparison with a conventional ball burnishing process. Finally, the rotating tool is used to investigate the influence of high rolling speeds on the leveling of the surface. All experiments were carried out with thermally coated specimens. A model for calculating the strain rates at the roughness peaks during ball burnishing is derived. For the experiments carried out with the rotating rolling tool, rolling velocities of 50,000 mm/min were realized. Calculations with the developed model showed that this results in local strain rates at the roughness peaks of up to 1,384 s−1. In addition, the flow stresses at the roughness peaks were calculated. Compared with quasi static experiments, the flow stress drops to less than the half under high velocities. This results in a better leveling of the surface for rolling velocities between 10,000 mm/min and 25,000 mm/min. A further rise of the rolling speed increases the flow stress again and thereby reduces the possible leveling.

Non-Contact Ultrasonic Abrasive Machining of Wire-Electrical Discharge Machined SUS304 Steel

Non-contact ultrasonic abrasive machining (NUAM) is a variant of ultrasonic machining (USM). In NUAM, material is removed predominantly by cavitation erosion in abrasive slurry. Due to a significantly lower material removal rate than traditional USM, NUAM is investigated for its applicability on surface modification and finishing in this study. Experiments were conducted on SUS304 steel samples machined by wire electrical discharged machining (WEDM). Due to the thermal spark phenomenon during WEDM, a thermal recast layer, of thickness approximately 15 μm, is often left over on the specimen’s surface after the process. The undesired thermal recast layer contributes to the poor surface integrity of specimens. A NUAM system was configured using a 40 kHz ultrasonic system. Ultrasonic vibration amplitude of 70 μm at the horn tip was used to generate cavitation bubbles in the abrasive slurry. NUAM was found to be effective in removing the unstable thermal recast layers by means of cavitation erosion. As a result, the average surface roughness, Ra, of the specimens improved from approximately 2.5 μm to ∼1.7 μm after 20 minutes of processing time. Furthermore, the addition of abrasive particles was observed to aid in more efficient removal of thermal recast layers than a pure cavitation condition.

Investigation of the Cleaning and Welding Steps From the Friction Element Welding Process

The requirement of increased fuel economy standards has forced automakers to incorporate multi-materials into their current steel dominant vehicles in order to lightweight their fleets. Technologies such as Self Piercing Rivets and Flow Drill Screws are currently implemented for joining aluminum to high-strength steels but only one-technology is viable for joining aluminum to ultra-high-strength steels without pre-holes, namely Friction Element Welding. This study is aimed at investigating how variations in the cleaning and welding steps of the Friction Element Welding process influence joint quality. A design of experiment was conducted to understand the influence of key process parameters (endload, spindle RPM, and relative distance) during these steps on the pre-defined joint quality metrics of head height, weld zone diameter, under-head fill area, temperature, and microhardness. It is found that cleaning step parameters have the greatest influence on process time and energy consumption, while welding step parameters greatly influence maximum torque on the element, head height, and underhead fill, with both cleaning force and weld force influencing weld diameter, all parameters influence temperature.

Development of Multi-Axis Laser-Assisted Milling Device

Laser-assisted machining (LAM) process is an effective method to facilitate material removal processes for difficult-to-cut materials. In LAM process, the mechanical strength of various materials is reduced by a laser heat source focused in front of the cutting tool during machining. Since the laser heat source is located ahead of the cutting tool, the workpiece is preheated by the heat source. This enables difficult-to-cut materials to be machined more easily with low cutting energy, increasing the machining productivity and accuracy. It is difficult to apply laser-assisted milling (LAMilling) to workpieces having complex shapes, because it is not easy to control laser preheating and the cutting tool path for three-dimensionally shaped workpieces. LAMilling has only been used in limited fields such as single-direction machining of flat surfaces. To apply this process in the industrial field, studies on workpieces having various shapes are needed. This study aims to develop a laser-assisted milling device having multiple axes and to investigate the machining characteristics of several difficult-to-cut materials.

Rotary Ultrasonic Machining: Effects of Tool End Angle on Delamination of CFRP Drilling

Aerospace, automotive and sporting goods manufacturing industries have more interest on carbon fiber reinforced plastics due to its superior properties, such as lower density than aluminum; higher strength than high-strength metals; higher stiffness than titanium etc. Rotary ultrasonic machining is a hybrid machining process that combines the material removal mechanisms of diamond abrasive grinding and ultrasonic machining. Hole-making is the most common machining operation done on carbon fiber reinforced plastics, where delamination is a major issue. Delamination reduces structural integrity and increases assembly tolerance, which leads to rejection of a part or a component. Comparatively, rotary ultrasonic machining has been successfully applied to hole-making in carbon fiber reinforced plastics. As reported in the literature, rotary ultrasonic machining is superior to twist drilling of carbon fiber reinforced plastics in six aspects: cutting force, torque, surface roughness, delamination, tool life, and material removal rate. This paper investigates the effects of tool end angle on delamination in rotary ultrasonic machining of carbon fiber reinforced plastics. Several investigators have cited thrust force as a major cause for delamination. Eventhogh, it is found on this investigation, tool end angle has more significant influence on the delamination in rotary ultrasonic machining of carbon fiber reinforced plastics comparing to cutting force and torque.

Study on Oil Adsorption and Polishing Characteristics by Novel Nanofiber Pad for Ultra-Precision Abrasive Machining

Nanofibers can be used in such fields/applications as medical care, environment protection, apparel, and agriculture. We also believe this field will continue to show fast growth in the next few years. In this paper, we focused an abrasive machining application for oil adsorbing and polishing performances that achieved polymeric nanofiber mass production by a melt blowing method. In the present report, we proposed an oil adsorption physical model and compared experiment results to develop a nanofiber polishing pad. We used this model and calculated the mass ratio of oil to abrasive grains and abrasive size in abrasive machining when the fiber mass and bulk density were constant. For realizing a free-form nano surface, such as a molding die surface, we conducted base experiments with different fiber diameters and grain sizes and compared the base polishing characteristics with commercial felt buff. The polished surface roughness of the workpiece became smaller, and the polishing processes on it were more stable with this new, low cost abrasive material on abrasive machining. We believe that the nanofiber abrasive pad can be used in abrasive machining with oil slurry as a next-generation abrasive material.

Discrete Element Simulation of the Stress Wave in High Speed Milling

As cutting tool penetrates into workpiece, stress waves is induced and propagates in the workpiece. This paper aims to propose a two-dimensional discrete element method to analyze the stress waves effects during high speed milling. The dependence of the stress waves propagation characteristics on rake angle and cutting speed was studied. The simulation results show that the energy distribution of stress waves is more concentrated near the tool tip as the rake angle or the cutting speed increases. In addition, the density of initial cracks in the workpiece near the cutting tool increases when the cutting speed is higher. The high speed milling experiments indicate that the chip size decreases as the cutting speed increases, which is just qualitatively consistent with the simulation.

Electrospun Sodium-Cobalt Oxide Ceramic Nanofiber and the Electromagnetic Responses

In this work, a sodium-cobalt oxide (NaxCo2O4) ceramic composite nanofiber was manufactured through electrospinning. The response of the fiber to external electromagnetic field was characterized to observe the heat generation in the fiber. In addition, we also measured the current passing through the fiber under the polarization of DC potential. It is found that the fiber has intensive heating behavior when it is exposed to the electromagnetic field. The temperature increases more than 5 degrees in Celsius scale only after 5 s exposure. The current – potential curve of the fiber reveals its dielectric behavior. It is concluded that this ceramic fiber has the potential to be used for hyperthermia treatment in biomedical engineering or for energy conversions.