Environmental friendly cutting fluids and cooling techniques in machining: a review
Abstract
Owing to environmental concerns and growing regulations over contamination and pollution, the demand for renewable and biodegradable cutting fluids is rising. In this review paper, an attempt is made regarding of green machining including the cutting fluid type as well as the methods to apply the cutting fluids in machining process. Knowledge of the cutting fluid types and its machining conditions are critically important in order to maximize the efficiency of cutting fluids in any machining process. Generally, heat generation at the cutting zone due to the friction at tool-chip interface, and friction between the clearance face of the tool and work-piece is always the decisive factor on the surface quality of the work-piece. A good understanding of the methods to apply cutting fluid at the cutting zone may significantly reduce the heat generation in machining and thus improve the surface roughness. Surface roughness and tool wear are always used as a quality indicator of a finished or semi-finished product. This paper reviews the developments in bio-based cutting fluids by using various vegetable oils and their performances in machining. Undoubtedly, these bio-based cutting fluids have significantly reduced the ecological problems caused by mineral-based cutting fluids. An overview of the cleaner application techniques of dry cutting, minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), and cryogenic cooling is also well presented. These techniques largely minimized the amount of cutting fluids used in machining while providing similar or even better cutting performances compared to wet cooling methods.
Keywords
- Vegetable-based cutting fluids;
- Dry cutting;
- MQL;
- Cryogenic cooling;
- Cutting fluids;
- Application methods
1. Introduction
In today's manufacturing industry, the demand is growing for low cost, high productivity, and good product quality. High productivity that is inherently associated with high cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut, significantly lead to a large amount of heat generation and raise the temperature at the cutting zone. Consequently, the dimension accuracy, tool life, and surface integrity of the product are deteriorated. Today, cutting fluids is considered as an accessory in a machining process in order to increase the productivity (Vieira et al., 2001). In terms of performances, it effectively increases the tool life, producing a better dimensional control and good surface quality. A good surface finish is not only desired for the aesthetic appeal of a product but also to improve the tribological properties, fatigue strength, and corrosion resistance. Thus, surface quality is extremely important in evaluating the productivity of machine tools and mechanical parts (Davim et al., 2008). Besides, it can be used as a critical quality indicator for the machined surface. The surface roughness mechanism is very complicated and mostly depends on the process parameters. If the cutting speed or feed rate are slowed down just to make the surface substantially smoother, it is just a waste of resources without significant gains in productivity. Therefore, optimization in cutting parameters as wel