Abstract
CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics) has been used for airplanes and automobiles for the purpose of light-weighting. However, it is well known that CFRP is a difficult-to-cut material because of increasing tool wear dramatically and showing inferior finished surface quality. This paper presents the influence of various water-soluble cutting fluids on tool life and finished surface roughness in end milling of CFRP. As a result, (1) Water-soluble cutting fluids, emulsion, soluble and solution, used in the tests improves the tool life compared with dry cutting. Especially, the difference of tool life is remarkable at the high cutting speed of 171 m/min. (2) When using a fluid, in which 0.2 Vol% of rust preventive agent added to water, showed the almost the same cutting performance as the water-soluble cutting fluids used in the tests. It was suggested that the cooling ability is to be involved with tool wear in cutting CFRP. (3) The finished surface roughness is small at the high cutting speed. There is no difference in surface roughness obtained with the water-soluble cutting fluids used in the tests.
