Experimental study and analysis of machinability characteristics of metal matrix composites during drilling

In this study, the metal matrix composite materials were produced by hot press with various production parameters. The drilling experiments were performed on computer numerical control vertical machining centre without cutting fluid. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out in order to determine the effects of the production parameters on thrust force and surface roughness of metal matrix composites drilled with different feed rate. The effect of production parameters such as temperature, pressure and reinforcement ratio were investigated, and their effects were presented. The optimal level for each production parameters was determined by ‘Maximize the S/N ratio approach with a Taguchi design’. The test results revealed that the reinforcement ratio was the main factor affecting the surface roughness of the metal matrix composites for both feed rate. However, same singularity was not matter on thrust force due to close contribution rates of production parameters and high error rates of analysis. In literature, an increase on the thrust force and the surface roughness values was reported as the feed rate increased during machining. Nevertheless, in our MMCs system, the thrust force and the surface roughness values were in tendency of declination as the feed rate increased which makes this study more novel research.