Abstract
This paper describes the presumption of lubrication phenomenon in steel cutting process with copper sulfate (CuSO4) by molecular orbital method. A popular theory states copper causes lubrication in the steel cutting process with copper sulfate. But an argument to the popular one occurs in our experiments of this study. We carry out a chemical element analysis with EPMA (Electron Probe Micro Analysis) and ESCA (Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis) to the cutting interface made by the experiments in order to estimate a friction state in the interface. And we calculate electronic state by molecular orbital method in order to estimate the frictional strength. As a result, Mechanism of lubrication of copper sulfate doesn't depend on the copper sulfate as the popular theory but depends on the sulfur element moved from upper surface of workpiece into the interface.
