IMPROVEMENT OF COMPACTED GRAPHITE IRON DRILLING OPERATIONS WITH CUSTOMIZED CUTTING FLUID

Sammanfattning: With its higher strength, Compacted Graphite Iron (CGI) is widely used in automotive industry. However, the machinability of CGI is challenging, mostly due to the high temperature in the cutting zone and the higher cutting force. This paper studies the influence of the different cutting fluids on the machinability of CGI material in drilling operations. The investigation compared a few customized cutting fluids having alkaline phase and oil phase, to a conventional cutting fluid. The oil phase of customized cutting fluid can help reduce the friction force in the machining process. The flank wear measurements showed there is no significant difference among the fluids. The thrust force measurements, however, showed that the customized cutting fluids could effectively reduce the cutting force by nearly 20%. By using the customized cutting fluid, the machining of CGI materials could either use higher feed rate to reduce cycle time when keeping the cutting force same, or use the same process data while reducing energy consumption.