Investigating the effect of tool surface micro-texturing on self-propelled rotary tools used for machining aluminum 7075

This study investigates the effects of using texture in machining with rotary tools. Textures can help reduce surface roughness by minimizing the chip/insert contact area. Additionally, rotary tools can mitigate wear and lower surface roughness by utilizing all insert edges instead of one. However, the combined effects of these methods have not been studied. For this purpose, a holder was designed to rotate the insert and create a desired inclination angle. Three types of inserts were used: Simple (which has no texture), clockwise, and counterclockwise textured insert. A full factorial design of the experiment was conducted, incorporating four inclination angles, two cooling conditions (wet and dry), and two replications, a total of 16 experiments for each insert type and 48 experiments overall. The results indicate that using the textured SPRT (self-propelled rotary tool) effectively reduces surface roughness to acceptable levels. The best results were achieved with the clockwise textured SPRT at an inclination angle of 20° and using lubricant, yielding an average surface roughness of 0.441 μm and R-squared values of 0.89, providing a reasonable estimate.