Cutting with Minimal Quantity Lubrication. Fundamental Research on the Milling Process.

The cooling lubricants are still widely used for machining operation today to extend the tool life and to improve the quality of the machined surface. However, due to increasingly strict regulation aiming at controlling environmental pollution, the costs of using cooling lubricants are rising. It is, therefore, necessary to reduce the amount of cooling lubricant used in production lines. The logical step which can be taken to avoid the environmental problem is dry machining. But sometimes dry machining is not possible due to manufacturing process aspects, such as extensive tool wear and insufficient surface quality. To solve those problems, this study proposes cutting with minimal quantity lubrication(MQL), which is able to achieve the function of the cooling and lubrication with an extremely low consumption of lubricants and great amount of air flow. In this paper, the mechanism of the MQL system is introduced and by using this system, milling provess on carbon steel and aluminum alloys is tested to see the effectiveness of the MQL method.