Investigation on an Innovative Internally Cooled Smart Cutting Tool With the Built-In Cooling-Control System

Abstract

There is a growing demand for sustainable and health-friendly chip removal applications in manufacturing industries. Internally cooled cutting tool (ICCT) designs promise low cost, eco-friendly cooling and no hazardous health effects. However, the ICCTs neither can estimate insert tip temperature (T-tip) precisely nor fix T-tip in determined temperature range by operator with controlling cooling of the insert. Within this, the machining quality of metallic materials can improve. For this reason, a new internally cooled smart cutting tool built-in cooling-control system (ICSCT) has been designed and manufactured for the turning operations. In this framework, a cutting tool has been modified with a new self-designed seat which has an inclined gap to spray the cutting fluid below the insert tip. Then, an innovative cooling-control system has been integrated to the cutting tool. An original and developable computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-statistic calibration method has been revealed to estimate T-tip. According to the calibration method enhanced with coding self-working strategy, the ICSCT can calculate T-tip by measuring the flank surface temperature (T-f), inlet temperature (T-inlet) and inlet velocity (v(f)). In conclusion, the ICSCT could decrease T-tip by up to 107 degrees C compared to no cooling in experiments. Whilst v(f) went up, T-f showed a decreasing trend. Whilst T-inlet went up, T-f values increased. Moreover, 1040 steel workpieces were machined and the average surface roughness from turning with the ICSCT was measured significantly less than dry turning under the same cutting parameters.