Effects of blended vegetable-based cutting fluids with extreme pressure on tool wear and force components in turning of Al 7075-T6 Emel Kuram 1 , Babur Ozcelik 1, * ,† , M. Huseyin Cetin 1 , Erhan Demirbas 2 and Sule Askin 2 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Gebze Institute of Technology, 41400 Gebze-Kocaeli, Turkey 2 Department of Chemistry, Gebze Institute of Technology, 41400 Gebze-Kocaeli, Turkey ABSTRACT In this study, performances of four different types of vegetable-based cutting fluids (VBCFs) over a commercial mineral cutting fluid were evaluated for machinability of Al 7075-T6. Lubrication properties of VBCFs were improved with additive of extreme pressure. Cutting force and tool wear data were obtained for performance analyses of cutting fluids during longitudinal turning of Al 7075-T6. Cutting, feed and radial forces indicated 1.70–38.25% improvements for VBCFs over the commercial mineral cutting fluid. The lowest average values of flank and nose wears obtained with blended cutting fluid containing 12% of extreme pressure were 0.09 and 0.10 mm, respectively, whereas these values for the commercial mineral cutting fluid were 0.18 and 0.15 mm. The scanning electron microscope results showed adherence of workpiece material occurred on rake and flank faces, and flank and nose wears were the dominant wear modes. It was found that performances of VBCFs during turning of Al 7075-T6 were better than that of the commercial mineral cutting fluid. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 20 January 2012; Revised 21 May 2012; Accepted 22 May 2012 KEY WORDS: vegetable-based cutting fluid; cutting tools; nonferrous metals; lubricant additives; electron microscopy; wear testing INTRODUCTION In machining processes, cutting fluids are used for coolant to reduce temperature in cutting zone 1 and lubricant to decrease friction and cutting forces. However, petrochemical-based and synthetic-based cutting fluids create many negative effects on the environment and health problems like lung cancer, respiratory diseases, dermatological and genetic diseases. 2–4 Therefore, use of petrochemical-based cutting fluids should be eliminated, and this issue has been widely investigated. Moreover, dry machin- ing has a higher potential of use in machining of some materials. 5,6 Unfortunately, some materials still require for cutting fluids applications in machining operations due to the lower surface quality and higher tool wear. For instance, aluminium and its alloys have highly adhesive characteristics with *Correspondence to: Babur Ozcelik, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Gebze Institute of Technology, 41400 Gebze-Kocaeli, Turkey. † E-mail: ozcelik@gyte.edu.tr LUBRICATION SCIENCE Lubrication Science (2012) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/ls.1202 Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.