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Proc. of Int. Conf. on Advances in Mechanical Engineering 2012

Experimental Analysis of CNC Turning using Taguchi

Method
Sujit Kumar Jha1, Sujit Singh2 and Shiv Ranjan Kumar3
1
Engineering Department, Ibra College of Technology, Ibra, Sultanate of Oman
skj828@gmail.com
2
Department of Mech. Engg., Jaypee University of Engineering & Technology, Raghogarh, India
singhsujit@hotmail.com
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sir Padampat Singhania University, Udaipur, India
shiv.ranjan@gmail.com

Abstract – The objective of this research is to utilize Taguchi Taguchi of Nippon Telephones and Telegraph Company Japan
methods to optimize material removal rate (MRR) during for the production of robust products. According to Taguchi,
machining operation on CNC turning of aluminium samples. quality of a manufactured product has total loss generated
The material removal rate has been identified as the quality by that product to society from the time has shipped. Taguchi
traits and assumed to be directly linked to productivity. There
developed a method based on or thogonal ar r a y
are three important cutting parameters namely, cutting speed,
feed rates and depth of cut, which has been considered during
experiments, which reduced “variance” for the experiment
the turning operation. An Orthogonal array has been with “optimum settings” of control parameters. Thus the
constructed to determined the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio. combination of Design of Experiments (DOE) with
According to experimental results, depth of cut is determined optimization of control parameters to obtain best results have
to be the most important factor on material removal rate achieved in the Taguchi Method. Signal to noise (S/N),
during turning operations. ratio and orthogonal array are two major tools used in robust
Ind ex terms - Tag uchi method, CNC Turning, Cutting design. Signal to noise ratio, which are log functions of
Parameters, MRR. desired output measures quality with emphasis on variation,
and orthogonal arrays, provide a set of well balanced
I. INTRODUCTION experiments t o accommodates many design factors
simultaneously [5, 6].
Taguchi’s robust design method is suitable to analyze the
The high speed machining (HSM) and modern machining
metal cutting problem by considering the optimization in end
technologies has been used to machine the parts that need
milling using S/N ratio and ANOVA method. Ghani et.al [7]
significant amount of material removal. Turning is one of the
established that the conceptual S/N ratio and ANOVA
most important machining process in which a single point
approaches for data analysis in end milling uses at high
cutting tool removes unwanted material from the surface of a
cutting speed of 355 m/min, low feed rate of 0.1mm per tooth
rotating cylindrical work piece [1]. The process parameters
and low depth of cut of 0.5 mm. Application of Taguchi’s
like cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut, coolant condition
method for parametric design has been carried out to
and tool geometry affects the material removal rate in turning.
determine an ideal feed rate and desired force combination,
The proper selection of process parameters is essential to
the experimental results showed that surface roughness
optimize the metal removal rate. The objective of this paper is
decreases with a slower feed rate and larger grinding force,
to investigate process parameters for a turning aluminium
respectively [8]. Feng. Cang-Xue (Jack) [9] considered the
work piece on EMCO CNC turning machine. In this study, three
impact of turning parameters on surface roughness of work
levels of speed, feed and depth of cut are evaluated for high
material depends on material, nose radius of tool, feed, speed
material removal rate (MRR). There are many cutting
and depth of cut. He has investigated that the feed has the
parameters like cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut has
most significant impact on the observed surface roughness.
been selected to optimize the economics of machining
Jafar Zare and Afsari Ahmad [10] mentioned the
operations, as assessed by productivity, total manufacturing
performance characteristics in turning operations of Df2
cost per part or some other criterion.
(1.2510) steel bars using TiN coated tools. Three cutting
Regardless of the early works on setting up optimum
parameters namely, cutting speed, feed rate, and depth of
cutting speeds in Computerized Numerical Controlled (CNC)
cut, will be optimized with considerations of surface
machining, the recent research [2, 3, 4] have mentioned that
roughness. Pramod S (2006) [11] demonstrated a systematic
the process parameters need to be optimized during CNC
procedure of using Taguchi technique for optimising MRR
machining is an essential and costly process for small and
in Electric Discharge Machine (EDM). S. Thamizhmanii (2007)
medium type manufacturing industries. The common
[12] applied Taguchi methodology to optimize cutting
tendency of process is to reduce the machining cost and
parameters in CNC turning for surface roughness. In section
time and increasing the accuracy of the product. Taguchi
2 Methodology of the experiment has been described.
method is statistical method developed by Professor Genichi
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Proc. of Int. Conf. on Advances in Mechanical Engineering 2012

Taguchi Method has been presented in section 3. Material
Study for this research is described in section 4. In section 5,
Experimental Method has been described and Section 6,
presented Results and Discussion. Finally, section 7 presents
conclusions.
vibration, friction, etc for the deviation of the output from the
desired output. Response is the outcome of the Product/
Process after giving three input variables. The figure 1 shows
the various influencing factors of product/process design

II. METHODOLOGY
There are various methodologies by which CNC
machining operation can be optimized to improve the
quality of a product or process. The “Build-test-fix” is the
primal approach to conduct the process according to the
resources available, rather than optimize it. On the other
hand, the objective of “One-factor-at-a-time” approach is to
optimize the process by running an experiment at one
particular condition and repeating the same experiment by
changing one factor till the effect of all the factors are known.
Fig. 1. Product/process diagram
A. Design of Experiments
The Design of Experiments (DOE) is the most powerful IV. MATERIAL STUDY
statistical technique in product\process development. The
general quantitative approach which is more logical has Pure aluminum is soft, ductile, and corrosion resistant
been selected for designing the experiments to achieve a with high electrical conductivity. It has strength to weight
predictive knowledge of a complex, multi-variable process ratio superior to steel. Common alloying elements are copper,
with the fewest trials possible. In this research, a 3 factor three zinc, magnesium, silicon, manganese and lithium to improve
level factorial technique has been employed for the development strength and strain hardening ability of aluminum. Traditional
of design matrix to conduct the experiments. A full factorial machining operations like turning, milling, boring, tapping,
design may also be called a fully crossed design. If there are etc are easily performed on aluminium and its alloys. However,
k factors, each at 2 levels; a full factorial design has 2k runs. some machining parameters such as rotational speed should
be less than steel and feed rates are lower on thin walled
III. TAGUCHI METHOD surface. Normally, higher speeds, feeds and depth of cut may
be employed in many applications depending on the nature
In Taguchi method, the main parameters have influence of the parts, machine tool, tool design, lubrication and other
on process results, which are positioned at different rows cutting conditions. There are four parameters like cutting
in a designed orthogonal array. The difference between force, tool life, surface quality, and chip formation have impact
the functional value and objective value is recognized as on machinability of a material [14].
the loss function that can be expressed by signal-to-noise
(S/N) ratio. The category the larger-to-the-better was used V. EXPERIMENTAL METHOD
to calculate S/N ratio for material removal rate, according
to the equation: The details of experiments, experimental variables and
constants have been shown in the Table I.
1 n 1 
S / N  10log10   2  T ABLE I. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS

 r i 1 yi 
Traditional experimental design methods are very
complicated and difficult to implement, as it require a large
number of experiments by increasing the process parameters
[13]. To minimize the number of tests, Taguchi developed a
particular design of orthogonal arrays to study the entire
parameter space with small number of experiments.
A. Product / Process Diagram
A Product / Process diagram is used to designate the
different factors influences of a product/process. The
signal factor, like product design or sequence of process is In this paper, there are three cutting parameters: cutting
the input into the Product/Process design. The control factors speed, feed rate and depth of cut has been considered for
are the factors, which can be controlled to obtain the desired three levels. Three variables are studied for three levels and
output, like speed, cutter radius, etc. The noise factors are hence nine experiments were designed and conducted based
the uncontrollable factors, like temperature, humidity, on Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array.
© 2012 AMAE 92
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The experiments were conducted on EMCO CNC turning
machine, which is highly versatile with the latest CNC technology,
driven by latest CNC control system.Figure 2 the configuration
of the machine as listed.
Industrial design: 2 axes slant bed lathe, Tool Turret: 12 station
Fig. 2. EMCO Concept Turn 250
A. Identifying Control Factors
Cutting speed, depth of cut and feed rate are considered
as the control factors. The cutting parameters and their levels
of this experiment are shown in Table II.
TABLE II. C UTTING PARAMETERS AND T HEIR LEVELS
Fig. 3. Profile Turning
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DOI: 02.AETAME.2012.3.15
VDI automatic tool changer optional 6 driven tool, Max turning
diameter: 85 mm, Distance between centre 405 mm, Travel X Z:
100*250 mm, Spindle speed: 60 – 6300 rpm, Max bar stock
diameter: 25.5 mm, Feed force: 0-3 N and Display: 12" LCD.
B. Experimental Plan and Experimentation
The component has drawn in AutoCAD 11 and shown in
the Figure 3. Experiments have been designed and carried
out using Taguchi’s L9 Orthogonal Array (OA). The objective
of this research to obtain a mathematical model that relates
the material removal rate to three cutting parameters in CNC
turning process. In this research, a 3 factor three level factorial
technique has been implemented for the development of
design matrix to conduct the experiments and construction
of the orthogonal array for this experiment.
C. Sample Calculation of MRR and S/N ratio
The turning operations are carried out as per the L9
Orthogonal Array and weight of the work piece before
machining and after machining is measured and tabulated in
the Table 4. Cycle time required for machining for each
experiment is observed. Metal removal rate is calculated using
the formula:
Metal Removal Rate in gms/Minute = Weight of Metal
Removed in grams Divided by Cycle time in minutes.
Metal Removal rate in MM3/Minute = Metal Removal rate
in Grams/Minute Divided by Density of Work Piece in MM3/
Grams.
All the experiments have conducted and the results and
calculations of MRR have been tabulated in the Table III.
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TABLE III. EXPERIMENTATION AND OBSERVATION TABLE
The objective of using the S/N ratio as a performance
measurement is to develop products and process insensitive
to noise factor. The sample calculations for the first
experiment have been shown above. The experimental values
of MRR and S/N ratios have tabulated in the Table III.
VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The response table, which contains the sums of the S/N
ratios for each level and for each factor has been shown in
the Table IV.
TABLE IV. LEVEL T OOLS O F S/N R ATIO FOR EACH FACTOR
© 2012 AMAE
DOI: 02.AETAME.2012.3.15
Graph. 1. Graph of Response Diagram for MRR
In practice MRR should be high, thus Taguchi method
refers to select the process parameter having more S/N ratio.
From Table IV and Graph 1, all level totals has been compared
and combination yielding the highest combined S/N ratio
has selected for maximum metal removal rate. In this
experiment, S3-F3-D3 combination yields the maximum metal
removal rate. This is the optimal levels combination of factors
for turning operation in CNC for aluminium material.
A. Analysis of Taguchi Design for MRR
To know the effects of the four process parameters the
overall mean value of S/N ratio is calculated as following:
Now all three levels of every factor are equally represented in
the nine experiments. Thus ‘M’ is a balanced overall mean
over the experimental region. The ‘effects of factor level’ has
defined as the deviation it causes from the overall mean. The
average S/N ratio for the experiment has been denoted by
MS1, MS2 and MS3 for the speed factor, MS1 can be given as:
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Similarly the MS2 and MS3 can be calculated and represented
in Table 5. MF1, MF2, MF3 and MD1, MD2, MD3 represents
the average S/N ratio for feed and depth of cut factor. All
these values have calculated and shown in the Table V.
TABLE V. AVERAGE S/N RATIO FOR EACH FACTOR AT EACH LEVEL
The basic criterion for experimental data is S/N ratio to
obtain biggest number of cycle values according to Taguchi
method. The S/N ratio should have maximum values that were
obtained from the calculations. From now, on level of valued
speed, feed and depth of cut factors are selected from Table
3 to determine optimum cutting parameters of experiments at
the same circumstances presented by Sanyilmaz [15].
From the results mentioned in Table V, it has been
observed that 3 levels of all factors including speed, feed
and depth of cut have higher value for material removal rate.
 Values for every given factor in Table 4 are defining the
differences between highest S/N ratio and lower S/N ratio of
factor from the highest value in Table 5 it is considered that
depth of cut factor has the highest effect, next significant factor
is speed followed by feed.
CONCLUSIONS
The paper has demonstrated an application of the
Taguchi method for investing the effects of cutting
parameters on material removal rate in turning aluminium
metal. L9 orthogonal array has been constructed for three
different levels of cutting parameters, which are speed,
feed and depth of cut. The results of the experiments have
performed according to L9 orthogonal array, S/N ratio by
using bigger is better S/N ratio equation. According to
maximum S/N ratio, the optimum cutting parameter for
material removal rate having highest significant factor is
depth of cut and the next significant factor is speed and
least is feed.
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