Study on the influence of fluid application parameters on tool vibration and cutting performance during turning of hardened steel

Recently the concept of hard turning has gained much attention in the metal cuttingindustry. In hard turning, multiple operations can be performed in single step, therebyit replaces the traditional process cycle. But it involves very large quantities of cuttingfluid. Procurement, storage and disposal of cutting fluid involve expenses andenvironmental problem. Pure dry turning is a solution to this problem as it does notrequire any cutting fluid at all. But pure dry turning requires ultra hard cutting tools andextremely rigid machine tools, and also it is difficult to implement in the existing shopfloor as the machine tool may not be rigid enough to support hard turning. In thiscontext, turning with minimal fluid application is a viable alternative wherein,extremely small quantities of cutting fluid are introduced at critical contact zones ashigh velocity pulsing slugs, so that for all practical purposes it resembles pure dryturning and at the same time free from all the problems related to large scale use ofcutting fluid as in conventional wet turning. In this study, fluid application parametersthat characterize the minimal fluid application scheme were optimized and its effect oncutting performance and tool vibration was studied. From the results, it was observedthat minimal fluid application in the optimized mode brought forth low vibration levelsand better cutting performance.