Determination of energy consumption during turning of hardened stainless steel using resultant cutting force

Abstract

Downsizing energy consumption during the machining of metals is vital for sustainable manufacturing. As a prerequisite, energy consumption should be determined, through direct or indirect measurement. The manufacturing process of interest is the finish turning which has been explored to generate (near) net shapes, particularly for hardened steels. In this paper, we propose using measured cutting forces to calculate the electrical energy consumption during the finish turning process of metals where typically the depth of cut is lower than the cutting tool nose radius. In this approach, the resultant cutting force should be used for calculating the energy consumption, instead of only the main (tangential) cutting force as used in the conventional approach. A case study was carried out where a hardened stainless steel (AISI 420, hardness of 47–48 HRC) was turned using a coated carbide tool, with a nose radius of 0.8 mm, without cutting fluid, and at 0.4 mm depth of cut. The experimental design varied the cutting speed (100, 130, and 170 m/min) and feed (0.10, 0.125, and 0.16 mm) while other parameters were kept constant. The results indicate that the electrical energy consumption during the particular dry turning of hardened steel can be calculated using cutting force data as proposed. This generally means machining studies that measure cutting forces can also present energy consumption during the finish or hard turning of metals, without specifically measuring the power consumption of the machining process. For this particular dry turning of hardened stainless steel, cutting parameters optimization in terms of machining responses (i.e., low surface roughness, long tool life, low cutting force, and low energy consumption) was also determined to provide an insight on how energy consumption can be integrated with other machining responses towards sustainable machining process of metals.