Environmentally sustainable cooling strategies in milling of SA516: Effects on surface integrity of dry, flood and MQL machining

Abstract The recent move towards ‘Environmentally Sustainable Manufacturing’ (ESM) is leading heavy industries (e.g. oil & gas, nuclear) to explore low-impact manufacturing strategies. In machining, however, most processes are still performed using traditional cooling method flood or high pressure lubricant emulsions. These emulsions expensive in their maintenance and disposal, present a significant environmental concern. This novel study combines evaluations of the performance strategies, such as dry milling minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), manufacture an industrially important vessel carbon steel (SA516) coated carbide inserts. Tool wear, surface roughness, residual stress energy consumption were measured during metal cutting trials for each strategy then compared. Likely tool wear when candidate lubricants was screened prior machining standard tribological frequency reciprocating tests. Significant improvements integrity observed with MQL compared coolant. Measured footprints also lower coolant providing cost savings advantages ESM approaches.