Evaluation of Performance of CNC Turning Centres Alternative Method

CNC Turning Centers are extensively used in aerospace, defence and automobile industries for manufacture of critical and complicated components accurately. The final quality of machined part depended on performance of machine tool in addition to cutting parameters, cutting tool and work material. Therefore periodic evaluation of performance of machine tool is essential for manufacture of precision components. But the standard methods involve highly sophisticated and costly instrumentation. Therefore, A simplified alternative method has been identified based on quality of the machined component. In this study, three similar CNC Turning centers of identical model but varied year of makes from same machine tool manufacturer were selected. These machines are being used at DMRL for various individual applications since from their installations. Two types of work piece materials namely soft material (Aluminium) and hard material (Stainless Steel) were selected for machining operation by the above CNC machine tools for performance evaluation. Subsequently, Machining experiments were conducted on the both cylindrical components of the above materialswith appropriate cutting parameters and cutting tools under similar working conditions. The parameters roundness and surface roughness of the machined components were inspected by high precision measuring instruments. Theinspection data is analysed for evaluation of performance of the machine tool. The result gave significant help for selection of appropriate machine tool for achieving accuracy of the component.