209 Int. J. Mech. Eng. & Rob. Res. 2013 Sudha Kumari et al., 2013 OPTI MI ZATI ON OF CUTTI NG PARAMETERS FOR SURFACE ROUGHNESS OF STAI NLESS STEEL SS304 I N ABRASI VE ASSI STED DRI LLI NG Sudha Kumari 1 * , Kapil Kumar Goyal 1 and Vivek Jain 1 * Corresponding Author: Sudha Kumari,  sudhajul07@gmail.com This paper is concerned with optimization of surface roughness when drilling of stainless steel SS304 with HSS drill. This study included drilling of SS304 with supply of Sic abrasive having grain size 650 and 1250 mesh size through abrasive slurry system. Abrasives not only used for cooling purpose but also increases the surface finish, MRR and reduce tool wear. Experiments were conducted on a universal milling machine. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is applied for executing the planning of experiments. Analysis of variance is employed to find the significant control factors and percentage contributions of each control factor. The drilling parameters namely spindle speed, feed rate; slurry concentration and mesh size were optimized using multiple performance characteristics for surface roughness. The result shows that the feed rate, and spindle speed are the most significant factors which affect the surface roughness and performance in the drilling can be effectively improved by using this approach. Keywords: Abrasives ANOVA, drilling, HSS drill bit, RSM, Stainless steel SS304, Surface roughness I NTRODUCTI ON Stainless steel resists chemical and electrochemical influences of atmosphere, water, acids and bases. The main alloying elements are chromium and nickel. The first ensures the corrosion resistance while the second extends the austenitic region into the environment temperature (Groover, 2007). These materials play an extremely important ISSN 2278 – 0149 www.ijmerr.com Vol. 2, No. 4, October 2013 © 2013 IJMERR. All Rights Reserved Int. J. Mech. Eng. & Rob. Res. 2013 1 ME Department MMEC, Mullana M M University, Mullana-Ambala-Haryana, India. role in industry in addition to their applications in automotive, aircraft, aerospace industries, building and medical apparatus where high corrosion occurs (Korkut et al., 2004). The machining of stainless steel generally gives short tool lives, limited metal removal rate, large cutting forces and power consumption due to their high temperature strength, rapid work hardening during machining with most Research Paper