Development and Testing of a Modular Lathe Tribometer Tool to Evaluate the Lubricity Aspect of Cutting Fluids on Freshly Cut Surfaces

抄録

Lubricity of cutting fluids is assessed by (i) Rubbing tests and (ii) Chip generation tests. In a rubbing test, there is very little possibility of exploring the behavior of the fluid on a nascent surface. Any method which aims to assess the lubricity of cutting fluids should be such that it tests the tribological properties on the nascent surface generated by cutting. Conventional tribological equipments like a scratch tester, pin-on-disk apparatus or a four-ball tester may not be successful in satisfying this criterion. A unique tribometer which can perform friction testing on freshly cut surfaces has been developed for experimental investigation. The lathe tribometer is set up that constitutes a cutting tool and a pin setup. The pin is independent of the tool and it is placed just below the cutting tool to ensure proper contact required to measure the component of the forces during the machining operation. The major advantage of the lathe tribometer is that it is portable and it can be used in the real-time machining operation. When the lathe tribometer is fixed on the lathe the spring in the tribometer is compressed against which the normal force is measured. The friction force comes into play when the workpiece is rotated against the tool in contact which is measured by the load cell in position. A cutting fluid (Green cutting fluid) developed in our lab and commercially available cutting fluids (CCF) were used for the experiments. Green cutting fluid (GCF) gave better machining performance in terms of COF and Roughness measurement at the 400 rpm speed (COF and Ra of GCF and CCF1 were 2.5/1.07 and 2.7/1.24 respectively). The performance of GCF was reliable and competent with cutting speed change. Thus the observations from the study provide an upshot for analysis, further study, and improvement of tribometer and green cutting fluid.