INVESTIGATION OF HOLE QUALITY AND TOOL WEAR IN HIGH-SPEED DRILLING OF AL 7050

ABSTRACT This paper investigated the feasibility of drilling aluminum 7050 with enhanced cutting speed. Two identical tools and two identical Al-7050 work-piece plates were utilised during the experiment. Wet cooling drilling on both conventional and high cutting speeds was conducted to compare the results. A total of 338 holes were drilled towards the end of the experiment. Tests for tool wear, borehole diameter, and hole quality were carried out to observe the different drilling performances by drilling with different cutting speeds. The result shows that the proposed high speed drilling produced better diameter accuracy, better surface roughness but poor exit burr hole tendency