Investigating the effect of machining parameters on surface roughness in turning of nitrile rubber with conventional grinding wheel: Application of taguchi’s approach

Abstract Rubber parts find a wide range of applications in several industrial sectors. Machining of rubber to produce final parts is preferred over using the conventional molding methods for the economic advantage of prior. Because of the complexity in the machining of rubber, not much experimental research has been documented in this area. The present work thus aims at machining of rubber using conventional lathe machine fit with a conventional grinding tool. Nitrile rubber rolls having a Shore hardness value of 30 is used for the experimental purpose. Speed, feed rate, and depth of cut are considered as the input machining parameters, and the surface roughness is selected as the response variable. Taguchi’s orthogonal array method is used for optimizing. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to determine the significance of each parameter, and the regression analysis is used to develop the linear analytical predicting model. The result obtained indicate N2f1D1 as the optimum condition. The linear model developed shows a very high degree of fitness and a very high degree of accuracy in prediction with an error of less than 1% between the experimental and predicted values of the surface roughness.