Evaluation of the Effect of Application of Air Jet Cooling and Cooled-Air Jet Cooling on Machining Characteristics of St 60 Steel

The use of cutting fluid is to reduce the friction between tool and workpiece, reduce and dissipate generated heat. The application of cutting fluid is also to improve the surface quality of workpiece and increase the tool life. On the other side, cutting fluid contains chemical carcinogens that causes serious health risks for machine operators and have inherent waste disposal concern on the environment. Due to these problems, some alternative have been sought to minimize or avoid the use of cutting fluid in machining processes. Air cooling techniques were proposed as alternative cooling mediums, i.e air jet cooling (AJC) and cooled-air jet cooling (CAJC), the liquid less method. In this work, air cooling techniques were investigated to be a possible solution of machining problem for cooling medium. This studi was also motivated by economics point of view that the application of AJC and CAJC would be more efficient than liquid method. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of AJC and CAJC on turning process of St 60 steel because it is used widely for production of components especially in small and medium enterprises in Indonesia. The tool tip temperatures, surface roughness and tool wear were measured for a range of cutting times. For a comparison purposes, experiments were also carried out with using traditional liquid coolant and without any cooling applied to the tool tip (dry cutting method). Experiments have shown that air cooling technques (AJC, and CAJC) can be used as cooling medium in machining process. Experimental results show that machining with CAJC have shorter tool life compare to machining with AJC and dry cutting, but liquid coolant in this studi is still the best cooling medium for machining of St 60 steel..