Experimental Investigation of Lard and Tallow Oils Suitability in Turning Operation of Hypo-Eutectoid Steels

Abstract

Cooling and lubrication in machining are important in reducing the severity of the contact processes at the cutting tool-workpiece interface. Currently, there are wide scale evaluations of the use of metal working fluids (MWFs) in machining, so as to reduce the amount of lubricants in metal removing operations. The increasing awareness of the general public on the environment and health impact of mineral oil-based metal cutting fluids (MCFs) is forcing machine workshop operators to reduce their use as cutting fluids and in search for more environmental friendly animal oil-based cutting fluids. Based on this, commercially available animal oils are currently been exploited as potential oils for formulation of animal oil-based cutting fluids. It is therefore necessary to conduct machining trials to determine the suitability of these oils in metal cutting operations such as turning, drilling and milling etc. This study investigates the effect of the selected cutting fluids on certain machining parameters in turning operations of hypo-eutectoid steels using carbide cutting tool. The selected oils purchased from a local market in Ibadan, Nigeria were sieved to remove any foreign particles or dirt. The solution (water, additives, and base-oil) were mixed at an elevated temperature of 55oC in a proportion 5:1:2.The essence of the emulsifier (additive) was to prevent separation of water from oil. The steel samples obtained from a steel company in Nigeria after spectrochemical analysis, were machined on a variable speed center lathe under different machining parameters. Experimental results clearly showed that Conventional cutting fluid might be replaced with Non-conventional one like LOCFs and TOCFs as they give better performances. With slight modifications and deliberate but careful alterations in some of the components of such oils, better performing cutting fluids could be obtained