EXTERNAL TURNING AT COUPLINGS APPLIED IN OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY USING COLD AIR AS CUTTING FLUID
Sustainability; cooling methods; cold air; liquid nitrogen, turning.
Sustainability is one goal for all industrial process nowadays. The great challenge is to have more and more cleaned and optimized processes. Considering the negative impact of mineral or vegetal coolant on the environment and operator health, the target of this study was to provide an alternative cooling method with cold air to replace the liquid coolant. In advanced process with high cutting speeds, the function of cooling the cutting region is much more important than lubrication. To analyze the differences between the cooling methods, tests were performed using vegetal coolant, as traditional method and cold air in two different conditions, with the air flow directed to the rake surface and also directing the air to the rake surface and flank surface. The temperatures, cutting forces and average surface roughness (Ra) were measured as responses and ANOVA was used as method of analysis. The preliminary results indicate that there are no significant differences in cutting forces and surface roughness, but the cold air didn’t have the same or better cooling efficiency. New tests including liquid nitrogen will be performed in an attempt to improve the cooling efficiency keeping in the way of clean cooling methods, mainly because the results for cutting forces and surface finishing were satisfactory.