Experimental Investigations & Effects of Cutting Variables on MRR and Tool Wear for AISI S2 Tool Steel

Machining is the most important of the manufacturing processes which involves the process of removing material from a work piece in the form of chips. Machining is necessary where tight tolerances on dimensions and finishes are required. Generally a machining process involves a large number of variables that affect its performance. Some of them are cutting parameters, geometry of cutting tool, coolant conditions, properties of tool material, properties of work piece, machine capabilities, etc. Among them, cutting parameters have profound effect on all kinds of performances when the same tool material and the same work piece material are used for machining. Therefore cutting parameters of speed, feed and depth of cut are considered as the process control variables and two important performance measures of CNC turning, namely, Metal Removal Rate (MRR) and Tool wear (TW) are considered for investigation. This paper presents the experimental investigations on the effects of cutting variables like Spindle speed, Feed and Depth of cut on the Material removal rate and tool wear. The experiments were conducted on AISI S2 tool steel grade on a CNC turning machine using carbide insert. The experiments were conducted as per the design of experiments. Initial trial experiments were conducted to fix the ranges for the control parameters. After conducting the experiments the MRR and Tool wear were measured and recorded. The effects were studied after plotting the graphs between the Input process parameters versus the responses using Design expert software. The results obtained in this study can by further used for optimizing the process parameters there by the optimized results help the operator to enhance the quality as well as machining rate.