Surface topographical analysis in high speed machining of titanium alloy (Ti-6A1-4V) using refrigerated air as a coolant

Abstract

High speed machining has been demonstrated to greatly improve the productivity of titanium alloys in manufacturing. There exists a concern that high speed machining of such alloys (Ti-6AL-4V) may leave surfaces detrimental to fatigue life. Hence titanium alloy magnifies the need for optimizing high performance of titanium machining. Current manufacturing trends require large usage of cutting fluid for lubrication during machining. This leads to increase the cost of production in industries and polluting the environment due to harmful additives present in the cutting fluids. With the aim to reduce cost and non-polluting coolant, refrigerated air as a coolant has been adopted by various machining application. In this work, the high speed turning of titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) is carried using refrigerated air as a coolant .In order to maintain the good surface integrity and to improve the machinability of Ti-6Al-4V, experiment were conducted by varying different combination of speed & feed rate. The effect of machining parameters on surface damages, surface integrity & surface hardness were measured and analyzed.