Water vapor cutting fluid assisted productive machining of Inconel 718

ABSTRACT

High-speed turning of Inconel 718 has been assessed with coated carbide tooling incorporating the minutely explored eco-friendly cutting fluid as water vapour. Effect of total seven parameters, viz. nozzle diameter, stand-off distance, pressure, flowrate, cutting speed, feedrate and depth of cut, has been explored for the resulting machined surface quality in terms of surface roughness and surface alterations; additionally introspection of chip reduction ratio has been done to evaluate cooling/lubrication mechanics of water vapour at tool-work interface. The parameters of stand-off distance, cutting speed, feedrate and depth of cut were dominantly affecting the surface roughness with their contributions being 9.70%, 22.70%, 20.85% and 34.47% respectively. By increasing nozzle diameter, stand-off distance and pressure, around 13.28%, 16.47% and 8.82% reduction in surface roughness is possible respectively on account of enhancement of cooling and lubrication effect; however conversely increasing the cutting speed brought around 40% increment in surface roughness.

KEYWORDS:

• Machining
• turning
• ecofriendly
• surface
• roughness
• cutting
• fluids
• Inconel

Acknowledgments

Authors acknowledge MHRD GOI’s assistance for procurement of CNC lathe and development of experimental setup at CAMT Research Lab, DBATU under the aegis of TEQIP I and II respectively. Authors thank Dr. Ramesh Singh for permitting surface characterisation facility utilization at MT Laboratory as well as Dr. Sushil Mishra for permitting scanning electron microscopy (SEM) facility utilization at MMMF Laboratory, in IIT Bombay, Powai.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.