Use of Submerged Machining in Milling Process

Abstract Various means of lubrication and/or cooling, as well as different ways of applying these fluids have already been implemented in machining in order to try to save costs during the manufacturing process, as well as not exposing the operator's health to irreversible damage by inhaling the vapor of these fluids. This work aims to study two new lubrication and cooling methods, never tested before: milling with the part submerged in neat oil and milling with the part submerged in aqueous fluid. The motivation for this study is to minimize the thermal cyclic variation of milling, which accelerates wear of the cutting tool and which should be reduced by submerging the part in these fluids. Machinability was then evaluated in terms of tool life, surface roughness and cutting power among 6 lubrication-cooling processes, namely, submerged with neat oil, submerged with aqueous fluid, abundant aqueous fluid (conventional machine jet), minimum volume of oil (MVO), minimum quantity of fluid with compressed air (MQF) and dry cutting. The above processes were also evaluated under different cutting speeds and different cutting widths (ae). The results showed that the submerged process with neat oil was the one that provided the greatest chip removal per tool life, followed by the submerged process with aqueous fluid, which fully met the expectations of this research. The mechanisms causing tool wear were attrition, abrasion and thermal cracks which were predominant in processes with aqueous fluid.