Influence of refrigeration/lubrication condition on SAE 52100 hardened steel turning at several cutting speeds

Nowadays, the use of cutting fluids on machining operations has been questioned, due to problems they may cause to the environment, due to damage to human health and also more due to the severe laws regarding industrial waste that have been passed. Therefore, industries are being forced to review the production processes aiming either, at elimination or, when it is not possible, a sharp reduction in the use of these fluids. The technique of minimum volume of oil (MVO) has been studied in machining processes as one alternative to the use of abundant cutting fluid. Research has shown that this technique, which is the pulverisation of a minimum volume of oil in a flow of compressed air, in several cases, reduces tool wear when compared to complete dry cutting, causing the improvement of the workpiece surface quality and an increase in tool life. In this work, the influence of MVO (oil flow of 10 ml/h) in the wear of a cubic boron nitride (CBN) tool, when turning 52100 hardened steel, was studied. Aiming at a comparison of the results, the experiments were also carried out under two other conditions: dry cutting and cutting with abundant soluble oil (wet cutting). During the experiments, the influence of cutting speed on CBN tool wear for the three refrigeration conditions was also checked. Besides this, tool wear and workpiece surface roughness was also measured as cutting time elapsed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.