Investigating the Effect of Process Parameters on Surface Roughness Indicators Produced by End Milling Operation When End Milling Solid Material AISI D3 Tool Steel

Abstract

Machining parameters such as speed, feed and depth of cut play a vital role in machining the given work piece to the required shape. These have a major effect on the quality as well as on quantity of production, cost of production and production rate; hence their judicious selection assumes significance. A study of surface roughness and cutting force during end milling on this material will be quite useful. In the present work the 2 level full factorial design has been selected for development of prediction models as well as for the optimization of milling parameters for minimum surface roughness and minimum cutting forces. An effort has also been made to investigate the effect of end milling parameters on surface roughness indicators end milling of AISI D3 tool steel. This work concluded that feed is the most significant and influential machining parameter that affect the surface roughness indicator (Ra, Rq and Rt) followed by depth of cut. The cutting speed has insignificant influence on the surface roughness parameters. The mathematical models developed clearly show that surface roughness indicators increases with increasing the feed rate but decreases with increasing the cutting speed. The results of ANOVA and the confirmation runs verify that the developed mathematical models for surface roughness parameters shows excellent fit and provide predicted values of surface roughness that are close to the experimental values, with a 95 per cent confidence level. The percentage error between the predicted and experimental values of the response factor during the confirmation experiments are within 5 per cent. The study was undertaken to investigate the effect of process parameters on surface roughness indicators produced by end milling operation when end milling solid material AISI D3 tool steel. The end milling operation was carried out using various cutting parameters by using a cutting insert. Machining data of surface roughness indicators were tabulated by using surface roughness measurement apparatus. A Surface Roughness Tester (Stylus equipment) measuring instrument was used to process the measured profile data.