Analysis and Optimization of cutting parameters of Carbon Steel EN8D used in the Shaft of Crawler Excavator under Carriage Track Roller Assembly for Model PC 200 - Review

Abstract

Excavators are popular earthmoving vehicles that consists of a bucket, arm, rotating cab, and movable tracks. These components provide superior digging power and mobility, allowing this heavy equipment to perform a variety of functions. Currently, Industries which uses crawler excavators having Carbon Steel material for movable track roller are facing problem of strength, weight and high cost of track roller material and processes. Hence, selection of proper relevant material and its manufacturing processes will be done which could increase strength as well as decrease weight and overall cost of excavator under carriage track roller assembly parts. Thus, after suitable identification of materials and manufacturing process of track roller assembly parts, optimization and analysis will be done to confirm selected materials. In the present work, by using Taguchi approach, the turning of EN8D carbon steel is carried out in order to optimize the turning process parameters. The present paper deals with the optimization of selected process parameters, i.e., Speed, Feed rate, Depth of cut. Taguchi orthogonal array is designed with three levels of machining parameters and different experiments are done using L9 (3^3) orthogonal array. Taguchi method stresses the importance of studying the response variation using the signal to noise (S/N) ratio, resulting the minimization of quality characteristic variation due to uncontrollable parameter. Predicted value of cutting parameters and verification test values are valid when compared with the optimum value. It is found that optimum value of verification test is within the limits of predicted value and the objective of the work is full filled. Keywords: Crawler excavator, track roller, Taguchi method, Optimization, EN8D carbon steel, signal to noise (S/N) ratio etc.