Machinability of titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) in environmentally-friendly micro-drilling process with nanofluid minimum quantity lubrication using nanodiamond particles

This paper discusses the experimental characterization on micro-drilling process of titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V), which is one of representative difficult-to-cut materials, with the nanofluid minimum quantity lubrication (nMQL). The miniaturized machine tool system is set up, and then, a series of micro-drilling experiments are performed under compressed air (CA), pure MQL and nMQL for a comparison. For the nanofluid, nanodiamond particles with the sizes of 35 nm and 80 nm are chosen, and the base fluid is vegetable oil. For the micro-drilling process, an uncoated carbide twist drill having the diameter of 300 μm is used for drilling holes in the titanium alloy workpiece. The experimental results show that the nMQL can reduce the drilling torques and thrust forces, but its effect is more obvious at a low feed rate (10 mm/min). In addition, the edge corner radii and hole circularity errors are significantly reduced in the case of small size (35 nm) and high weight concentration (0.4 wt. %) of the nanodiamond particles at the low feed rate. It is also found that the nMQL effectively mitigates chip adhesion of drill tool and burr of drilled holes.