An Investigation of Energy Efficiency in Finish Turning of EN 353 Alloy Steel

Mechanical machining is a significant part of manufacturing industries, which usually includes the cutting of metals to remove unwanted material using different cutting tools. The EN 353 alloy steel is widely utilized to manufacture critical parts of an automobile such as heavy-duty gear, camshaft, gudgeon pins, shaft, and pinion etc. which require significant strength, hardness, resilience and surface quality. Thus, it needs to be investigated from the point of view of energy efficiency (ĖĖ) during its processing to finish parts. The high ĖĖ of the machining processes is generally the key factor for reducing the electricity bills and carbon emissions. In the present work, the ĖĖ is optimized with the Taguchi method and modelled with response surface methodology (RSM) for the finish turning of EN 353 alloy steel. The interactions between cutting variables and nose radius were considered in experimental design, and the cermet inserts were used. The results reveal that at the optimum finish turning variables, there is a 78.92% enhancement in ĖĖ as compared to finish turning settings utilized in industries. The optimum value of ĖĖ is achieved by cutting variables at higher levels and nose radius at a middle level. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) results indicates that the feed rate has minimal influence on the response and the depth of cut has an immense effect followed by cutting speed and nose radius. The coefficient of determination 93.02% for the regression model is relatively high, which indicates the model’s abilities to create correct predictions. Further, the optimization energy parameters can be considered along with other quality features for more realistic results.