A review of developments towards dry and high speed machining of Inconel 718 alloy

The increasing attention to the environmental and health impacts of industry activities by governmental regulation and by the growing awareness in society is forcing manufacturers to reduce the use of lubricants. In the machining of aeronautical materials, classified as difficult-to-machine materials, the consumption of cooling lubricant during the machining operations is very important. The associated costs of coolant acquisition, use, disposal and washing the machined components are significant, up to four times the cost of consumable tooling used in the cutting operations. To reduce the costs of production and to make the processes environmentally safe, the goal of the aeronautical manufacturers is to move toward dry cutting by eliminating or minimising cutting fluids. This goal can be achieved by a clear understanding of the cutting fluid function in machining operations, in particular in high speed cutting, and by the development and the use of new materials for tools and coatings. High speed cutting is another important aspect of advanced manufacturing technology introduced to achieve high productivity and to save machining cost. The combination of high speed cutting and dry cutting for difficult-to-cut aerospace materials is the growing challenge to deal with the economic, environmental and health aspects of machining. In this paper, attention is focussed on Inconel 718 and recent work and advances concerning machining of this material are presented. In addition, some solutions to reduce the use of coolants are explored, and different coating techniques to enable a move towards dry machining are examined. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.