The minimum quantity of lubrication (MQL) technique is becoming increasingly more popular due to the safety of environment. Moreover, MQL technique not only leads to economical benefits by way of saving lubricant costs but also presents better machinability. However, the effect of MQL parameters on machining is still not clear, which needs to be overcome. In this paper, the effect of different modes of lubrication, i.e., conventional way using flushing, dry cutting and using the minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) technique on the machinability in end milling of a forged steel (50CrMnMo), is investigated. The influence of MQL parameters on tool wear and surface roughness is also discussed. MQL parameters include nozzle direction in relation to feed direction, nozzle elevation angle, distance from the nozzle tip to the cutting zone, lubricant flow rate and air pressure. The investigation results show that MQL technique lowers the tool wear and surface roughness values compared with that of conventional flood cutting fluid supply and dry cutting conditions. Based on the investigations of chip morphology and color, MQL technique reduces the cutting temperature to some extent. The relative nozzle-feed position at 120°, the angle elevation of 60° and distance from nozzle tip to cutting zone at 20 mm provide the prolonged tool life and reduced surface roughness values. This fact is due to the oil mists can penetrate in the inner zones of the tool edges in a very efficient way. Improvement in tool life and surface finish could be achieved utilizing higher oil flow rate and higher compressed air pressure. Moreover, oil flow rate increased from 43.8 mL/h to 58.4 mL/h leads to a small decrease of flank wear, but it is not very significant. The results obtained in this paper can be used to determine optimal conditions for milling of forged steel under MQL conditions.

The optimal feedrate planning on five-axis parametric tool path with multi-constraints remains challenging due to the variable curvature of tool path curves and the nonlinear relationships between the Cartesian space and joint space. The methods for solving this problem are very limited at present. The optimal feedrate associated with a programmed tool path is crucial for high speed and high accuracy machining. This paper presents a novel feedrate optimisation method for feedrate planning on five-axis parametric tool paths with preset multi-constraints including chord error constraint, tangential kinematic constraints and axis kinematic constraints. The proposed method first derives a linear objective function for feedrate optimisation by using a discrete format of primitive continuous objective function. Then, the preset multi-constraints are converted to nonlinear constraint conditions on the decision variables in the linear objective function and are then linearised with an approximation strategy. A linear model for feedrate optimisation with preset multiple constraints is then constructed, which can be solved by well-developed linear programming algorithms. Finally, the optimal feedrate can be obtained from the optimal solution and fitted to the smooth spline curve as the ultimate feedrate profile. Experiments are conducted on two parametric tool paths to verify the feasibility and applicability of the proposed method that show both the planning results and computing efficiency are satisfactory when the number of sampling positions is appropriately determined.