The increasing costs of environmental and health compliance, as well as the search for additional productivity have led manufacturing industry to reconsider the use of cutting fluids. Responding to these challenges, application methods and industrial-scale delivery systems have recently been developed for cooling machine tools with small amounts of liquefied nitrogen, an inert and dry-vaporizing alternative to conventional cutting fluids. This paper describes the operation and effects of a liquefied nitrogen system installed on CNC lathes and milling machines. As compared to conventional flood emulsion cooling, the use of liquid nitrogen extends tool life as much as 6-fold when cutting titanium alloys. The mechanisms of wear reduction are illustrated with scanning electron micrographs of carbide tools and plots of tool tip temperatures measured with embedded thermocouples. The attendant
| Number of Pages : | 12 |
| Published : | 11/01/1999 |
