Experimental Investigation of Machining Characteristics of Al 6063 Aluminium Alloy Using Response Surface Methodology 2021-01-0283

In modern automotive industries, technology is advancing. Industries needs lower-cost operations with less production time and better surface properties to maintain competitiveness. For that attempts have been made by researchers to predict process parameters for achieving optimum surface quality. Aluminium alloys (Al 6063) are widely used in the industrial application. It has applications in the field of automotive structures owing to its excellent strength, aesthetics, and availability. With its widespread use it is important to understand its machining properties which is the motive of this research work. This research work reports the significance of influence of speed (s), feed (f), depth of cut (d) and nose radius (r) of the cutting tool on the Material removal rate (MRR) and Surface roughness (SR) of the Al 6063 aluminium. Cemented carbide tool inserts were used to machine the Al 6063. The optimization of the process parameters was achieved by using the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) technique. Experiments were performed at three levels of speed (465-680-1000 rpm), feed (0.04-0.08-012 mm/rev), depth of cut (0.15-0.45-0.75 mm) and cutting tool nose radius (0.4-0.8-1.2 mm) values. It has been found that MRR increases with the increase of speed which is quite evident as for a particular time more material will get removed. MRR also increases till 0.08 mm/rev Feed and then decrease with further increase in feed. For surface roughness, as the speed increases, the SR value increases and with feed it gets decreased because as the speed and feed increase the cutting tool will not be able to cut the material and could result in rubbing instead of cutting. It was observed that the low depth of cut and low nose radius of the cutting tool resulted in low surface roughness values. As with the increase in depth of cut more it will be difficult for the cutting to cut the material and also at high nose radius the sharpness of the cutting tool decreases which made the surface rough.