Factors Affecting Optimal Surface Roughness of AISI 4140 Steel in Turning Operation Using Taguchi Experiment

This paper presents the result of using Taguchi method in turning process of medium carbon steel of AISI 4140. The primary concern is to find the optimal surface roughness after turning process. The taguchi method is used to get a combination of factors and factor levels in order to get the optimum surface roughness level. Four important factors with three levels were used in experiment based on Taguchi method. A number of 27 experiments were carried out during the research and analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) method. The result of surface finish was determined in Ra type surface roughness. The depth of cut was found to be the most important factors for reducing the surface roughness of AISI 4140 steel. On the contrary, the other important factors i.e. spindle speed and rake side angle of the tool were proven to be less factors that affecting the surface finish. It is interesting to see the effect of coolant composition that gained the second important factors to reduce the roughness. It may need further research to explain this result. (paper)