Experimental Investigation of Bubble-Mixed Cutting Fluid Delivery for Micro Deep-Hole Drilling

In drilling, chip-clogging results in increased drilling temperature, excessive tool wear, and poor hole quality. Especially, in microdrilling, low rigidity of the tool and inability of cutting fluid to penetrate narrower tool–workpiece interface significantly reduce the drilling performance. A novel bubble-mixed cutting fluid delivery method proposed in this research aims toward achieving a high-performance micro deep-hole drilling process with a significant reduction in the consumption of cutting fluid. Experimental results show that the bubble-mixed cutting fluid delivery method achieves lower thrust force during drilling, higher drilled depth before tool breakage, and lower dimensional and circularity errors when machining deep holes in comparison with dry cutting or conventional flood delivery method. It is also found that the smaller-sized bubbles effectively penetrate the tool–workpiece interface during the drilling producing deeper holes by better chip evacuation and cooling.