5th International & 26th All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR 2014) December

12th14th, 2014, IIT

Guwahati, Assam, India

An Experimental Investigation of Hot Machining Performance

Parameters using Oxy-Acetylene gas setup
Venkatesh Ganta1*, D Chakradhar2
1*

Dept. of Mechanical Engg., NITK Surathkal, 575025, venkatesh.8056@gmail.com

Dept. of Mechanical Engg., NITK Surathkal, 575025, chakradhar.d@nitk.edu.in

Abstract

This paper focuses on optimizing the cutting conditions for the average surface roughness (Ra) and metal removal
rate (MRR) obtained in hot machining of 15-5PH martensitic stainless steel with 40 HRC. Hot machining
experiments were performed on lathe machine using K313 carbide tool insert. Experiments were conducted based
on Taguchi L18 orthogonal array. The statistical method of signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio and the analysis of variance
(ANOVA) were employed to investigate the optimum process parameters like speed feed, depth of cut and
workpiece temperature and their effect on the performance characteristics i.e., surface roughness and metal removal
rate. The results of the study indicate that feed rate has the most significant effect on surface roughness. Cutting
speed and feed rate has the most significant effect on material removal rate.
Keywords : Hot machining, Surface roughness, MRR, Taguchi.

1 Introduction
Precipitation hardenable martensitic stainless steel
15-5PH has incredible advantages in aerospace
industries (particularly in actuator parts for modern
aircrafts), nuclear industries, chemical, petrochemical,
gears, pumps, food processing, paper and general
metalworking industries (Alexandre et al., 2013). These
materials provide an outstanding mechanical properties,
high strength and hardness, good corrosive resistance,
weldability, low distortion. Precipitate hardened
stainless steels exhibit high strengths at temperatures up
to 315oC like other martensitic stainless steels (Ashok
Kumar et al., 2013). The hardness of 15-5PH stainless
steel is 40 HRC and it is also one of the difficult to cut
materials.
The main aim of machining is to produce the parts
most economically. An unsuitable decision causes
expensive production cost and decreases the machining
quality (Ozler and Tosun 2002). The materials having
mechanical properties like high strength and hardness,
good corrosive resistance, weldability, low distortion,
which are frequently used in aerospace and nuclear
industries, are generally difficult to cut materials.
Conventional machining of these materials have
problems like low speeds, feeds, poor surface finish,
high tool wear, less tool life low production, in another
aspect unconventional machining is often employed for
machining of these materials. But, the unconventional
machining of these materials involves a high capital cost

and offers a low material removal rate (MRR). To

overcome these problems hot machining is one of the
most potential techniques developed to machine
difficult to cut materials.
In hot machining a part or whole workpiece is
heated before or during machining (Lei et al., 2001).
Heating of the material makes high hardness of the
material become soft, resulting in improved
machinability, high production rate, low power
consumption from all these advantages hot machining is
extremely used full to machine hard to cut materials like
ceramics (Ozler et al., 2001). Many researchers have
used different heating techniques like laser heating,
plasma heating, induction heating, electrical heating and
they were proved that these heating techniques are
expensive. Several researchers reported that there is an
improvement in both surface finish and tool life in hot
machining (Akasawa et al., 1987, Ueharaet al 1986.,
Hinds et al 1980, Raghuram et al., 1979, Chen et al.,
1973, Pal et al., 1969). In hot machining it was
observed that the cutting mechanism of the ceramics
changes from brittle fracture type to plastic deformation
type (Ueharaet al., 1986). Hinds et al. (1980) suggested
that the shape of the heat source and positioning of the
torch also affects overall efficiency. Materials of
different hardnesss were machined using different
grades of carbide tools, over a range of cutting speeds
and heating current. Chen et al.(1973) and Uehara et al.

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An Experimental Investigation of Hot Machining Performance Parameters using Oxy-Acetylene gas setup

(1983) improved the cutting performance by the using

coated carbide tools in electric hot machining,
suggesting new possibilities in the field of the
machining of low machinability metals. Raghuram et
al. (1979) tool life is observed to increase if a magnetic
field is applied during machining. Thandra et al. (2010)
they conducted experiments in both conventional and
hot machining and they observed that hot machining
was effective in bringing down the cutting forces,
surface roughness and flank wear by about 34%. Tosun
et al. (2004) heated high manganese steel with liquid
petroleum gas flame and showed that cutting speed and
feed rate were the dominant variables on multiple
cutting performance characteristics like tool life and
surface roughness. The cooling method of the cutting
tool is very effective for reducing the tool wear in the
hot machining process (Akasawa et al., 1987). In
plasma hot machining cutting forces is decreasing by
machining high hardness materials (Kitagawa et al.,
1990). Hot machining is mainly used in turning. But
some researchers used it for shaping and milling also
(Pal et al., 1971). Based on the literature review,
research work carried on hot machining on difficult to
cut materials is to improve the machinability such as
cutting forces, surface roughness and tool wear. After
an extensive research and survey of existing heating
techniques (Kitagawa et al., 1990; Uehara et al.,1983) it
has been concluded that the oxy-acetylene heating setup will be in expensive compared to others techniques.

2 Experimental setup
A 15-5PH martensitic stainless steel rod with 32
mm diameter as workpiece used in these experiments.
The chemical composition of 15-5PH stainless steel
with 40 HRC is shown in Table 1. K313 tungsten
carbide insert is specified as SNMG 120408 is used as a
cutting tool. The process parameter ranges were
decided on the basis of machine capability and pilot
experiments. The selected ranges of process parameters
are shown in Table 2. In this paper L18 orthogonal array
is employed to analyze experimental results of
machining obtained from 18 experiments for hot
machining individually varying four parameters speed,
feed rate, depth of cut, and workpiece temperature.
For conducting experiments, an oxy acetylene
heating setup was used to heat the work piece material.
Oxy acetylene heating is one of the best choices for hot
machining it requires low cost equipment the heat
transfer to the workpiece is very low, although the gross
heat available and the energy transfer density will be
low and metallurgical damage of the workpiece is low
(Larine and Martynow., 1966).
The flame was
generated through the nozzle of torch. A special
attachment was used to move the torch mounted on
carriage to provide a flexible movement of heat source
while machining. During all the experiments, the
distance between the torch and workpiece is 25 mm.
Flow rates for acetylene and oxygen were adjusted by
pressure regulator and kept constant to get a neutral
flame, which was used throughout the machining.

Fig.1. Experimental setup for hot machining operation

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5th International & 26th All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR 2014) December 12th14th, 2014, IIT
Guwahati, Assam, India

Table 1 Chemical composition of 15-5PH stainless steel

Element

Mn

Si

Cr

Ni

Cu

Ta

0.07

1.00

0.040

0.030

1.00

14-15.50

3.5-5.5

2.5-4.5

0.15-0.45

Table 2 Parameters and their levels of cutting experiments

Symbol

Cutting parameters

A
B
C
D

I
31
0.2
0.4
150

Cutting speed
Feed rate
Depth of cut
Workpiece Temp.

3 Design of Experiments

= 10log

Taguchi method is a powerful tool for the design

of high quality systems. It provides a simple,
efficient and systematic approach to optimize design
for performance, quality and cost. To study effect of
four process parameters like speed, feed, depth of cut,
workpiece
temperature
on
two
important
performance characteristics surface roughness, MRR.
Based on the degree of freedom of process
parameters, L18 orthogonal array is selected.
Accordingly, 18 experiments were carried out to
study the effect of machining process parameters on
performance characteristics. In all tests surface
roughness was measured by Mitutuyo surface tester
and metal removal rate is calculated by the ratio of
weight loss of the workpiece to the time. The
specimen was weighed before and after machining
using digital weighing machine. The time was
measured using a digital stopwatch. Parametric
design study involves control and noise factors.
Measure of interactions between these factors with
regard to robustness is signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio
3.1 S/N ratio
characteristics

to

compute

Levels
II
77
0.3
0.6
250

hot

machining

The surface roughness of the hot machined parts

has been considered as smaller the better, whereas the
metal removal rate, is considered as higher the better.
These considerations have been taken for good
quality characteristics of interest.
For the present study S/N ratio for metal removal rate
is calculated using the formula.

Units
III
120
0.4
0.8
350

(1 / y
n

2
i

m/min
mm/rev
mm
o
C

(1)

S/N ratio for surface roughness of the machined parts

is calculated using the formula

= 10 log

1
n

(y

2
i

(2)

4 Results and discussion

The quality of machined surface formed in hot
turning is evaluated in terms of average surface
roughness (Ra) values and metal removal rate MRR.
From the results it was determined that Ra values
obtained by the carbide cutting tool at all cutting
conditions. Minimum surface roughness value
obtained in machining of the work piece material was
determined as 0.49 m from the experiments
performed at 120 m/min cutting speed, 0.2 mm/rev
feed rate, 0.4 depth of cut and 250oC temperature.
The maximum metal removal rate was obtained at
120 m/min cutting speed, 0.4 mm/rev feed rate,
0.6 depth of cut and 250oC temperature as shown in
Table 3.
S/N ratios of the Ra and MRR data obtained from
the experimental results, which will be used to
determine the optimal levels of each variable, were
calculated according to the Eq. (1&2) Table 3.
Figure 2 and Figure 3 illustrates the graphs of S/N
ratios that will be used to reach the optimal Ra value
and their values are determined as A3, B1, C2 and D3.
The optimum process parameters to maximize the
material removal rate are A3, B3, C3, D2. .

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An Experimental Investigation of Hot Machining Performance Parameters using Oxy-Acetylene gas setup

Table 3 Experimental results of hot machining

S.N0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18

Speed
(m/min)
31
31
31
77
77
77
120
120
120
31
31
31
77
77
77
120
120
120

Feed
(mm/rev)
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.2
0.3
0.4

doc
(mm)
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.4
0.6
0.2
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.6
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.2
0.4
0.4
0.6
0.2

Temp
o
C
150
250
350
350
150
250
350
150
250
150
250
350
250
350
150
250
350
150

Ra
(m)
1.45
1.51
1.72
1.5
1.24
2.21
0.62
1.68
2.41
1.4
2.08
2.04
1.58
2.14
2.35
0.49
1.47
2.64

MRR
(gm/min)
10.21
14.32
18.42
12.23
23.41
32.32
17.63
29.14
68.45
14.56
19.15
22.65
29.1
32.42
40.14
15.83
41.37
55.79

Data Means

Data Means
Speed

Feed

Speed

32

-1.5

Feed

30

-3.0

28

-4.5
-6.0
31

77

120

0.2

doc

0.0

0.3

0.4

Temp

-1.5
-3.0

Mean of SN ratios

Mean of SN ratios

S/N
ratio MRR
10.18
11.08
13.46
10.94
5.43
16.76
12.37
13.08
17.66
9.32
16.07
15.84
11.98
16.40
17.41
15.84
10.49
18.52

Main Effects Plot for SN ratios

Main Effects Plot for SN ratios

0.0

S/N
ratio (Ra)
-3.23
-3.58
-4.71
-3.52
-1.87
-6.89
4.15
-4.51
-7.64
-2.92
-6.36
-6.19
-3.97
-6.61
-7.42
6.20
-3.35
-8.43

26
24
31

77

120

0.2

doc

32

0.3

0.4

Temp

30
28

-4.5

26

-6.0

24
0.2

0.4

0.6

150

250

350

Signal-to-noise: Smaller is better

0.2

0.4

0.6

150

250

350

Signal-to-noise: Larger is better

Fig. 2. Main effect plot of S/N ratios of Ra

Fig. 3. Main effect plot of S/N ratios of MRR

Table 4 ANOVA for S/N ratios of Ra

Source
Speed
Feed
Depth of cut
Workpiece
Temperature
Error
Total

Degree of
freedom(DF)
2
2
2

Sum of
squares(SS)
26.10
122.01
5.97

Mean of
squares (MS)
13.0
61.
2.9

6.00

3.0

9
17

88.26
248.36

9.8

F ratio

P value

1.33
6.22
0.30

0.312
0.020
0.745

%
Contribution
10.51
49.12
2.408

0.31

0.744

2.421
100

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5th International & 26th All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR 2014) December 12th14th, 2014, IIT
Guwahati, Assam, India

Table 5 ANOVA for S/N ratios of MRR

Source

Degree of
freedom(DF)

Sum of
squares(SS)

Mean of
squares (MS)

F
ratio

P
value

%
Contribution

Speed
Feed
Depth of cut
WorkpieceTemperature

2
2
2
2

123.830
154.623
23.969
4.814

61.915
77.311
11.985
2.407

11.42
14.26
2.21
0.44

0.003
0.002
0.166
0.655

34.78
43.43
6.732
1.352

Error
Total

9
17

48.788
356.024

5.421
100

Table 6 Comparison between experimental value and predicted value

Parameter

Confirmatory
experimental results

Predicted values

Differences

Surface roughness

Raexp
0.982

S/Nexp
2.34

Racal
0.945

S/N cal
2.117

Raexp- Racal
0.037

S/Nexp - S/N cal

0.223

Metal removal rate

MRRexp
64.45

S/N exp
34.98

MRRcal
57.22

S/N cal
35.66

MRRexp-MRRcal
7.23

S/Nexp - S/N cal

0.68

4.1 ANOVA Analysis

The purpose of ANOVA analysis is to find the effect
of design parameters on quality characteristics (Yang
and Tarng., 1998). The results of ANOVA which was
done to determine the significant level of variable on the
Ra obtained during the hot turning of 15-5PH stainless
steel is given in Table 4. The ANOVA table it is
analyzed that significance level of =0.05, i.e. for the
confidence level of 95% it has been acceptable that P
value less than 0.05 is indicated that the performance of
the parameter statistically significant and more than
0.05 less significant. F ratios and their percentage
contribution was taken in to consideration to identify the
significance level of the variables. Table 4 indicates that
the most efficient variable on the Ra value is the feed
rate 49.12%. The other variables that have effect on Ra
are cutting speed 10.51%, workpiece temperature
2.42%, and depth of cut 2.40%.
The results of ANOVA which was done to determine
the significant level of variable on the MRR occurred.
during the hot turning of 15-5ph stainless steel is given
in Table 5. F ratios and their percentage contribution
was taken in to consideration to identify the significance
level of the variables. Table 5 indicates that the most
efficient variable on the MRR value is the feed rate

43.43%. The other variables that have effect on MRR

are cutting speed 34.78%, 6.73%, depth of cut,
workpiece temperature 1.35 %.
4.2 Confirmation Experiments
In Taguchi method optimization is verified by
confirmation experiments after the determination of
variable levels that will give the optimal results. The
confirmation experiment results performed at the
optimum variable levels (A3, B1, C2, D3) determined for
Ra and MRR the variable levels (A3, B3, C3, D2) were
evaluated by taking in to consideration. Table 6 gives
the comparison of the results of the confirmation
experiments which were conducted according to the
optimum levels. Predicted values are calculated
according to the Minitab 16 software. The difference
between experimental values and predicted values for
surface roughness is 0.037 while the metal removal rate
is 7.23 are shown in table 6

5. Conclusions
In this study the statistical method of signal-to-noise
ratio (S/N) and (ANOVA) were applied to evaluate the
effect of processes parameters on surface roughness
and metal removal rate and to find the optimal processes
parameters to minimize the surface roughness and to
maximize the metal removal rate during hot machining

370-5

An Experimental Investigation of Hot Machining Performance Parameters using Oxy-Acetylene gas setup

of 15-5PH stainless steel. The results obtained from this

study are given below:
The smallest Ra values occurred during hot
machining of 15-5PH stainless steel are obtained
as 0.49 m from the experiments performed at
120 m/min cutting speed, 0.2 mm/rev feed rate,
0.4 depth of cut and 250oC temperature.
The highest MRR values occurred during hot
machining of 15-5PH stainless steel are obtained
as obtained at 120 m/min, 0.4 mm/rev feed rate,
0.6 depth of cut and 250oC temperature.
The effects of the variables on surface roughness
and metal removal rate were determined by
ANOVA. The most significant parameters were
found that feed rate and cutting speed while the
workpiece temperature and depth of cut are the
least significant parameters.

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