Effect of solid lubricant on surface quality in turning of Al 6061 alloy

The aluminium alloys are widely employed in the aeronautical, aerospace and automotive industries as they provide good heat conductivity, corrosion resistance, high strength to weight ratio even at high temperatures. Cutting fluids are still widely used in the machining of aluminium alloys to cope with problems associated with the heat generation. However, the growing social concern towards environmental conservation has made it necessary to develop cleaner production technologies such as dry machining in which no cutting fluids are employed. Solid lubricant assisted machining is a novel concept to control the machining zone temperature without polluting the environment. The surface quality of the machined parts is one of the most important product quality characteristics and one of the most frequent customer requirements. The present study focuses on investigating the effect of boric acid powder as solid lubricant on surface quality. Experiments have been conducted using Taguchi's L9 orthogonal array. The influence of machining parameters viz. cutting speed, feed, rake angle and tool nose radius on surface quality has been investigated.