OPTIMIZATION OF SURFACE ROUGHNESS OF TI-6AL-4V TITANIUM ALLOY USING TAGUCHI TECHNIQUE

Titanium alloys are metallic materials which are the combination of Titanium and other chemical elements. Such alloys have very high toughness and tensile strength, light weight, extraordinary corrosion resistance, and ability to withstand extreme temperatures. High speed machining of the material titanium and its alloys which is a highly reactive material is still far away uncertain. For this reason, it is wiser to study the optimization of Machining parameters under transient cutting speed before advancing to high speed machining. In this paper, it is discussed the influence of machining parameters like cutting speed on Tool life, coolant flow rate, surface roughness of Titanium alloy during performing the machining process. Taguchi technique has been used to acquire the data with certain plan of experiments. Signal to noise (S/N) ratio and an Orthogonal array are employed to investigate the machining characteristics of titanium alloy & optimize the machining parameters. In optimization technique, Taguchi method is used for optimization for Variable parameters coolant flow rate (0, 50& 100ml/hr), cutting speed (120, 135 & 150m/min), feed rate (0.1, 0.125, 0.25mm/tooth) and depth of cut (2, 2.25 & 2.5 mm).