Investigating the Effect of Feeding Angle on the Performance of a Two-way Application of Cutting Fluids

An investigation was carried out to see how a change in the angle of cutting fluid’s (CF) feeding affects the performance of a two-way cutting fluid application. The motivation for this research was based on the fact that little or no works have been done on a two-way CF application as well on the results of findings in our first work. The experiments were conducted on a centre lathe machine type XL400. The workpiece was a medium carbon steel and the cutting tool used was a rectangular cemented carbide tool insert. The investigated parameters were the surface quality of the machined workpiece, the rate of tool wear and temperature of the cutting zone under different angles of feeding. The experiments were executed under the following conditions of machining: Depth of cut (t) =1.5 mm, Speed (V) = 180 rpm, Feed rate (f) = 0.75 mm/rev. The two-way cutting fluid application was most effective when the feeding angle was 150º in terms of the surface quality. i.e. the lowest surface roughness value was obtained at this angle and it was 5.77 µm as against 9.67 µm for one-way application of CF. In other words the surface roughness was reduced by 40.3%. The values of the tool wear and temperature at the cutting zone were 0.11 mm and 25.60ºc respectively compared to 0.15 mm and 30.48ºc for the one-way application. Whereas, the lowest tool wear (highest tool life) and temperature were achieved at feeding angle of 60º. The corresponding values for the tool wear and temperature were 0.11 mm and 24.54ºc respectively for the two-way application as against 0.15 mm and 30.48ºc for the one-way application. Some of the abnormal values obtained for the two-way application may be due to self excited vibrations of the machine tool. The value of the surface roughness was 6.79 µm at this angle which was the next lowest value obtained in the whole investigation. Thus, the most effective angles of feeding of CF to the cutting zone by the two-way application were 60º and 150º respectively. Consequently, one can conclude from the obtained results that the angle of feeding of CF to the cutting zone to a greater extent affects its effectiveness.