INVESTIGATION ON EFFECT OF TIN COATED AND UNCOATED HSS TOOLS FOR MACHINING AA6061

Aluminum alloy 6061 was widely used in aircraft structures, yacht construction, automotive chassis, etc., For machining the Aluminum alloy 6061 high-speed steel (HSS) end mill cutters were used. When carbide end mills were used for the same it results in high durability and good wear characteristics but it is quite more expensive. In this research work, machining of aluminum alloy 6061 with Titanium nitride coated HSS end mills was attempted. The coating process was done by a physical vapor deposition method. Experiments were conducted in full factorial approach with keeping feed rate, speed and depth of cut as variables each of them has three levels. Wear characteristics were compared to machining using uncoated and coated end mill. The optimization process is carried out using Minitab software and the results were presented