AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION AND OPTIMISATION OF ECOLOGICAL MACHINING PARAMETERS ON ALUMINIUM 6063 IN ITS ANNEALED AND UNANNEALED FORM

The cost of using coolant and its disposition in machining industry world-wide is very high. Furthermore, chemical substances contained in coolant are very harmful to environment and machine shop workers. Ecological machining is inevitably the future trend in machining industry. This project applies the Designs of Experiments (DOE) approach to optimize parameters of a computer numerical control (CNC) in end milling for Aluminum 6063 alloy and its annealed form under Ecological machining. The work piece employed was in the form of rectangular block of 100 mm length, 100 mm breadth and 25 mm depth. The groove difference (i.e., dimensional accuracy of groove width) and the roughness average at the bottom plane of the inside groove (i.e., the plane of end milling) were studied. Planning of experiment was based on a Taguchi orthogonal array table. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was adapted to identify the most influential factors on the CNC end milling process. Simultaneously, by applying regression analysis, a mathematical predictive model for predictions of the groove difference and the roughness average has been developed in terms of cutting speed, feed rate, and depth of cut. The feed rate is found to be the most significant factor affecting the groove difference and the roughness average in end milling process for Aluminum 6063