Use of palm olein as cutting fluid during turning of mild steel

Abstract

This research evaluated surface roughness and cutting forces using an alternative vegetable oil, namely, ‘super palm olein’, as cutting fluid on turning of mild steel. The outcomes of the proposed alternative cutting fluid were compared with that of conventional mineral-based cutting fluid (coolant machining) and dry machining. Taguchi orthogonal array was employed to set design of experiments and results were analysed based on signal-to-noise ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to rationalise multi-parameter experiments, namely, cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut. It was found that depth of cut influences most significantly on surface roughness, that is, 49.02% for dry machining, 73.35% for coolant machining and 53.86% for super olein machining. On the other hand, the highest contributor to cutting force performance was cutting speed with 51.44% for dry machining, 87.28% for coolant machining and 75.46% for super olein machining. The experimental outcome shows that surface roughness under super olein machining tends to improve as the depth of cut and cutting speeds increase and surpasses that of conventional coolant machining and dry machining. Additionally, regression equations were proposed, based on experimental results, to predict surface roughness and cutting force for given parameters.