Application of Taguchi to Cutting Behavior of Stainless Steels

Abstract

The selection of un-appropriate cutting factors in any type of metal cutting is led to higher surfaceroughness and larger cost because they directly affect the quality characteristics and production rate. The cuttingof AISI 304 stainless steel is investigated both experimentally and theoretically at basic parameters whileoutputs are surface roughnesses of Ra, Rz and Rt. Taguchi L9 design is adopted in analyzing the machiningresults using carbide inserts. Variance analysis and regression analysis are carried out to determine effectivefactors and relationship between the input and responses, respectively. It is shown that the optimum surfaceroughness is obtained around 1.18 µm, and the optimum parameters are determined from experiment trial 7.Further, the feed rate is dominant effect on the surface roughness while the speed and the depth of cut are noteffective. Moreover, the regression models are developed, the correlation coefficients of Ra, Rz and Rt arefound to be around 99.15%, 99.76% and 96.77%, respectively, that are quite reasonable, but slightly more errorsgenerated in Rt results. The present finding results exhibit that Taguchi method is an effective method forimproving surface quality of cutting stainless steels. The experimental design applied to improve surface qualityis also applicable to industrial practices.