Author : Madhav Murthy, K.Mallikharjuna Babu and R.Suresh Kumar

In the present day and age, manufacturing industries strive to reduce costs while at the same time increase quality of a component. This can be done effectively only after detailed studies have been carried out in the various areas of manufacturing sciences, i.e.: forging, material removal using machine tools, casting, forming, etc. Material removal using machine tools is a relatively expensive process, which is labor intensive and depends on the skill of the laborer. In recent times the focus is shifting to CNC machines due to its inherent advantages. Hence studying the parameters affecting the surface finish of a component in a CNC machine is of utmost importance. Various parameters which affect the surface roughness will be considered with enough variations in the parameters to arrive at a conclusive result. Of course, the parameters having more influence on the surface roughness will be given more importance. In this study, the effect of various cutting parameters on the surface finish of Al6061 aluminium alloy was investigated. Based on Taguchi method of design of experiments L16 orthogonal array was selected for conducting turning experiments on Al6061 T6 using CNC LT-16 turner with carbide tipped tool and the cutting parameters selected were feed, spindle speed, depth of cut and tool nose radius. The L16 array used 4 factors at 2 levels each and the experiments were conducted in temperature controlled environment. The results obtained were analyzed using ANOVA and the regression equation for predicting the surface roughness was developed.

Keywords: Cutting parameters aluminium alloy ANOVA Surface roughness