Enhancement of Deep Drilling for Stainless Steels by Nano-Lubricant through Twist Drill Bits

Abstract

This paper represents a new lubricant method which is able to one-stroke drill deep holes with a length-to-diameter of 8, on the AISI SUS 304 stainless steel. By adding graphene nanosheet into typical soluble emulsion and then mixing with water, a nano fluid can be made. The results revealed that using nanofluid can provide a reduction of 4.4-fold of the drilling torque, and thus expand the tool life as many as 20 times, compared with using typical emulsion lubricant. The proper set of cutting parameters was found by using Taguchi L9 experiments as 550 rpm spindle speed and 0.05 mm/rev. The results can be expanded to apply in other deep drilling of hard-to-cut material, using inexpensive devices and avoiding peck-drilling. The proposed lubricant can also be promissing for other machining operations.