Eco-friendly machining using retrofitted cryogenic machining system

Adoption of greener machining techniques shall offer Indian industry a cost-effective route to improve its economic, environmental, and social footprint when it comes to cutting aerospace-grade intractable materials. Cryogenic machining is one such technique which uses an advanced method to deliver liquid nitrogen (LN2) (at -321 degrees F) directly to the cutting edge enabling substantially faster processing speeds and increased tool life compared to conventional cooling methods. This results in higher throughput and reduced process energy demand, thus improving the efficiency of the cutting process. Further, the retrofitting ability of cryogenic systems mean they can be paired-up with in-house machining centers, making them an easy to use low-cost solution. This study presents the comparison of process energy consumption in the dry and cryogenic turning of Ti-6Al-4V. A hybrid design of experiments (DoE) is considered for the machining trials - this consists of a combination of full factorial DoE and Taguchi method to identify the influence of cutting process parameters on the process energy consumption in dry and cryogenic machining. Results show that cryogenic machining is more effective in achieving higher material-removal-rate when compared to dry machining. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.