OPTIMIZATION AND INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF PROCESS PARAMETERS ON THE QUALITY OF HOLE DRILLED BY ULTRASONIC DRILLING PROCESS

Abstract

Ultrasonic drilling (USD) better known as Ultrasonic Machining (USM), in the category of non-conventional machining methods has been providing the necessary assistance, to machine limitless number of shapes in hard to very hard and brittle materials, whether conducting or non-conducting. Though the stock removal rates of this method are low, it has been widely used because the process is independent of thermal or elastic properties of work piece, and does not thermally damage or introduce stresses in the work piece. Major researches have been evidenced in past for machining brittle materials using USD, but for tough materials very little effort has been put in to explore the machining capacity of USD. Thus in the present study commercially available pure and alloy Titanium was selected as work material for USD for its application in manufacturing industry The objective of the present work is to investigate the effect of Ultrasonic Drilling process parameters, on the quality of hole drilled and to optimize the set of process parameters with respect to material removal, tool wear, wear rate, surface finish and hole over size. The parameters taken for this study were: 1. Work piece 2. Grit Size 3. Slurry Concentration 4. Power Rating 5. Tool The Taguchi technique has been used to investigate the effect of the USD parameters and subsequently to predict set of optimal parameters. Experiments were carried out by using L18 (21 * 37) Orthogonal Array. The average responses of the main factors and interaction effects have been plotted. Analysis of Variance of raw data and S/N data has been performed to identify significant parameters affecting the mean and the variation in the response.