Investigations on the effects of nitrogen gas in CNC machining of SS304 using Taguchi and Firefly Algorithm

Abstract

This work attempts to use nitrogen gas as a shielding gas at the cutting zone, as well as for cooling purposes while machining stainless steel 304 (SS304) grade by Computer Numerical Control (CNC) lathe. The major influencing parameters of speed, feed and depth of cut were selected for experimentation with three levels each. Totally 27 experiments were conducted for dry cutting and N2 gaseous conditions. The major influencing parameters are optimized using Taguchi and Firefly Algorithm (FA). The improvement in obtaining better surface roughness and Material Removal Rate (MRR) is significant and the confirmation results revealed that the deviation of the experimental results from the empirical model is found to be within 5%. A significant improvement of reduction of the specific cutting energy by 2.57% on average was achieved due to the reduction of friction at the cutting zone by nitrogen gas in CNC turning of SS 304 alloy.