Drilling studies on the prepared aluminum metal matrix composite from wet grinder stone dust particles

Abstract The demand for high-performance and cost-effective composite materials is gaining attention in today’s competitive world. In this work, an attempt has been made to prepare low-cost reinforced aluminum metal matrix composite by reinforcing 10% and 20% weight fractions of wet grinder stone dust (WSD) particles, an industrial waste produced during stone dressing operation in the wet grinder manufacturing industry. As drilling is one of the major machining operations carried out in industries, the prepared composite materials are subjected to drilling studies using carbide, TiN-coated carbide, and HSS drills of 5 mm diameter under dry conditions. The major concern with the machining of composites is the extreme tool wear. Tool wear is a very important and challenging task for manufacturing engineers because it has adverse affects on the product quality and increases the production cost. Hence, there is a need to identify the factors that have most significant influence on the tool wear. In this work, the Taguchi-based design of experiments and analysis of variance were used to determine the optimal cutting parameters and to analyze their effects on thrust force, torque, and tool wear. Multivariable linear regression analysis was also employed to determine the correlations between the factors and the response, namely, thrust force, torque, and tool wear. Finally, a confirmation test was conducted to validate the Taguchi optimization method. From the experimental results, feed rate was identified as the dominant factor influencing the thrust force and spindle speed was identified as the significant factor influencing the torque. Thrust force, torque, and tool wear were found to increase with the increase in the reinforcement content irrespective of the drill used for the investigation.