Study of Drilling Process by Cooling Compressed Air in Reinforced Polyether-Ether-Ketone

This study is focused on the application of a cooling compressed air system in drilling processes; this environmentally friendly technique allows removing material at very low temperatures, approximately up to −22 °C in the cutting area. The main goals are to find the most improve cutting conditions with less energy consumption, for the drilling of reinforced polyether-ether-ketone with glass fiber at 30% (PEEK-GF30) with cooling compressed air by a Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube, and to find a balance between environmental conditions and adequate process performance. Drilling tests were carried out on plates of PEEK-GF30 to analyze the influence of cutting parameters and environmental temperature (–22, 0 and 22 °C) on variables such as thrust forces, energy and material removed rate by the use of statistical methods; analysis of variance, analysis of means, response surface, and desirability function were employed to identify the optimum region that provides the most improved values of the aforementioned variables. Drill bit diameter was also analyzed to determine the quality of drilled holes. During the drilling processes, force signals were detected by a piezoelectric dynamometer connected to multichannel amplifier and a pyrometer was used to control the temperature. The diameters of the drilled holes were measured by a coordinate measuring machine. Cooling compressed air can be considered an adequate technique to improve the results from an environmental and efficient perspective; in particular, the maximum desirability function was found at a spindle speed of 7000 rpm, a feedrate of 1 mm/rev and a temperature close to −22 °C.