Experimental Investigation on Machinability of Aluminum Alloy during Dry Micro Cutting Process Using Helical Micro End Mills with Micro Textures

Aluminum alloy material is widely used in the electronics, weapons, aviation and aerospace industries, due to its medium strength, good corrosion resistance, good toughness and excellent oxidation properties. With the trend of product miniaturization, micro cutting has become the mainstream technique for fabricating micro parts and components, so it is very meaningful and vital to work on removing the cutting fluid from the micro cutting process and make it totally sustainable and eco-friendly. In this work, an attempt has been made to fabricate micro textures onto the rear surface of helical micro end mills with diameters of less than 1 mm. Micro textures in the form of grooves were fabricated using a noncontact low speed wire electrical discharge turning technique. Dry micro cutting experiments were carried out on an aluminum alloy material using helical micro end mills with micro textures and the dry micro cutting surface quality and tool wear have been investigated. The influence of dry micro cutting parameters on the surface roughness parameters were also investigated. Experimental results showed that the S(a) and S(q) can be reduced to be about 1.56 μm and 2.08 μm, respectively. Contrasting results indicate that the implantation of micro textures does not deteriorate the dry micro cutting surface but improves the machined surface consistency of an aluminum alloy workpiece. The tool wear on helical micro end mills with micro textures involved in the dry micro cutting process of Al 6061 mainly include rear frictional wear, oxidation wear and diffusion wear.