Effect of tool vibrations on surface roughness during lathe dry turning process

Choice of optimized cutting parameters is very important to control the required surface quality. In fact, the difference between the real and theoretical surface roughness can be attributed to the influence of physical and dynamic phenomena such as: built-up edge, friction of cut surface against tool point and vibrations. The focus of this study is the collection and analysis of surface roughness and tool vibration data generated by lathe dry turning of mild carbon steel samples at different levels of speed, feed, depth of cut, tool nose radius, tool length and work piece length. A full factorial experimental design (288 experiments) that allows to consider the three-level interactions between the independant variables has been conducted. Vibration analysis has revealed that the dynamic force, related to the chip-thickness variation acting on the tool, is related to the amplitude of tool vibration at resonance and to the variation of the tool's natural frequency while cutting. The analogy of the effect of cutting parameters between tool dynamic forces and surface roughness is also investigated. The results show that second order interactions between cutting speed and tool nose radius, along with third-order interaction between feed rate, cutting speed and depth of cut are the factors with the greatest influence on surface roughness and tool dynamic forces in this type of operation and parameter levels studied. The analysis of variance revealed that the best surface roughness condition is achieved at a low feed rate (less than 0.35 mm/rev), a large tool nose radius (1.59 mm) and a high cutting speed (265 m/min and above). The results also show that the depth of cut has not a significant effect on surface roughness, except when operating within the built-up edge range. It is shown that a correlation between surface roughness and tool dynamic force exist only when operating in the built-up edge range. In these cases, built-up edge formation deteriorates surface roughness and increases dynamic forces acting on the tool. The effect of built-up edge formation on surface roughness can be minimized by increasing depth of cut and increasing tool vibration.