Determining the Effect of Cutting Fluids on Surface Roughness in Turning AISI 1330 Alloy Steel Using Taguchi Method

Taguchi method has been employed to investigate the effects of cutting fluids on surface roughness in turning AISI 1330 alloy steel, using manually operated lathe machine. Experiments have been conducted using L27 (34) orthogonal array and each experiment was repeated three times and each test used a new cutting tool, High Speed Steel (HSS), to ensure accurate readings of the surface roughness. The statistical methods of Signal-to-Noise (S/N) ratio and the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were applied to investigate effects of cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut on surface roughness under different cutting fluids. Minitab 14 software was used to analyze the effect of variables on the surface roughness. Results obtained indicated that optimal variables for the minimum surface roughness were cutting speed of 35 m/min (level 2), feed of 0.124 mm/rev (level 1), depth of cut of 0.3 mm (level 1) and a cutting fluid with a viscosity of 2.898 mm2/s (level 3). Hence, the optimal parameters to obtain better surface roughness of the workpiece material were obtained when groundnut oil based cutting fluid was used. Analysis of variance shows that feed rate has the most significant effect on surface roughness.