Performance investigation and analysis of conventional and surface textured cutting inserts

Abstract

The concept of Industry 4.0 evolved in manufacturing industries due to the adverse requirement for hassle-free development in production and human resource management. It provides the prospect for manufacturers to optimize the production operations in a quick and efficient manner by finding and matching the needs of the customers. Sustainable manufacturing is one of the subsets in the concept of Industry 4.0 which involves the concepts of improving the equipment and process effectiveness, decreasing the time to manufacturing and reducing the wastages that lead to cost savings, enhanced worker involvement and safety. Another subsets of Industry 4.0 is green manufacturing which discusses the importance of reduction in the usage of conventional resources and to move forward to greener manufacturing. It describes the ways to eradicate the burden for the environment due to the usage of chemical substances, chemical processes, coolants and lubricants during the production of any component. The investigation of dry turning operations on Austenitic Stainless Steel Grade 304 is performed using cemented carbide cutting insert as experimental pilot work in this research. The results of the experimentation reveal the dimensional inaccuracy and increased surface roughness on the turned workpiece materials due to wear prolongation in the conventional cutting insert. Sustainable manufacturing concept of surface texturing is considered and two kinds of texture patterns namely chevron and cross-chevron textures are made on the rake face of the cutting inserts using neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet (Nd:YAG) laser texturing machine. For the same set of experimental conditions, the cross-chevron texture pattern is seen with better results than the chevron textured and non-textured inserts. The surface textures on the rake face help in breaking down the chip and reduce the friction between the work and the chip and acted as a self-lubricant insert. The main cutting forcesobserved with 6.47 %, 4.56 % and 5.74 % lesser for the