Performance assessment of vegetable oil-based MQL in milling of additively manufactured AlSi10Mg for sustainable production

The precision of lightweight components produced during machining of aluminium alloy is critical as a reason of its high chemical reactivity to the tool metal when cutting. Mineral-based cutting fluids (CFs) used in the manufacturing industry pollute the environment and offer adequate health risks to the operators; it is vital to develop environmentally friendly machining technologies. As a corollary, vegetable oil (VO) must be used to replace mineral oil to avoid pollution. In recent decades, VO produced from raw edible sources is a reliable source for greener CF. Toxic fumes and skin irritations caused by conventional CFs are all avoided when using VO in machining. In this research, an additively manufactured AlSi10Mg specimen was machined with distinct coolants to enhance the surface trait. The mechanical performance such as tensile, hardness and wear strength were investigated to prove that the 90 degrees oriented AlSi10Mg parts show better strength. Further, the machining of 90 degrees oriented AlSi10Mg parts was performed to examine certain issues such as surface morphology, flank wear and cutting temperature using different cooling regimes (flood and MQL with soybean oil). As a result of heat generation in the cutting zone, the surface deteriorates and the cutter needs to be replaced often. The MQL with VO minimises the heat generated at the cutting region and lessened the roughness to 25-42% and temperature to 24-39% with flood coolant. Additionally, the microstructure under MQL cutting produced fine grains. The desirability function was employed to find the ideal cutting condition for sustainable manufacturing.