Investigation of the optimum cutting conditions during turning aluminum alloy using Taguchi method.

In this research paper, the machinability of the aluminum alloy has been investigated by turning it without using coolant fluid. Three cutting variables were selected to achieve this investigation at three levels which are cutting speed, cutting depth, and cutting angle (bevel cut). Also, it was used Taguchi L9 matrix method to generate nine experiments, and these experiments were carried out using a lathe machine. Speed cutting steel was used as a cutting tool and the surface smoothness was measured for each experiment by taking three readings for each sample and calculating the average value of them. Furthermore, the results were analyzed statistically and practically using Minitab 16 software and Design Expert 6.0 program. An ANOVA table was presented and used to measure the significance of the constructed statistical model. Where, the contribution and importance of each cutoff vary in relation to the output that represented by the smoothness of the surface. The main aim of this work is to present a new approach to find the optimum cutting conditions, where the surface roughness is considered the criterion to analyze the results. Based on this approach, the optimum cutting conditions were found to obtain the smoothest cut surface using Design Expert 6.0 program. It was found that the best cutting conditions for cutting speed, cutting depth and cutting angle are 500 rpm, 0.1 mm, 80ᵒ, respectively in order to achieve the smoothest cut surface of 1.318 micron. In addition, it was found that the cutting speed has the highest influence on the smoothness of the cut surface, followed by the cutting angle and the depth of cut has the minimum effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]