Eco-friendly sustainable machining with MoS2-based solid lubricant

Machining is one of the basic and inevitable operations in the manufacturing industry. The machining performance is estimated based on various parameters like cutting forces, surface roughness, tool–chip interface temperature, and specific energy. In the traditional approach, cutting fluids are greatly utilized to dissipate the generated heat during machining, but their utilization causes a threat to nature and human being’s health. Therefore, there emerges a necessity to determine user-friendly, sustainable, and eco-friendly substitutes for traditional cutting fluids. The field of advanced tribology has proposed the usage of solid lubricants due to their inherent properties, such as excellent tribological performance, reduced machining zone temperature due to lowered friction, and enhanced tool life. Therefore, in the present study, pure MoS2 and composite MoS2–TiO2 solid lubricants have been employed in the milling process of AISI 52100 steel with HSS end mill cutter. The machining was carried out in different conditions such as uncoated tool without use of lubricant, uncoated tool with use of lubricant, coated tool without use of lubricant, and coated tool with use of lubricant that were employed to analyze their effect on machining performance. The experimental results showed substantial improvement regarding reduced cutting forces, reduced temperature at tool–chip interface, improved surface finish, and average tool wear with the application of solid lubricants. Among the various lubricating conditions, composite MoS2–TiO2-coated tool with composite MoS2–TiO2 lubricant exhibits excellent machining performance.