Dear editor,
Thank you very much for your time and effort in handling our manuscript titled “Machinability
study of Ti-6Al-4V alloy using solid lubricant”. We appreciate the careful reading of our
manuscript and the valuable comments and suggestions. We have revised the manuscript point
by point, according to the referees’ comments.
The revised parts are highlighted in the manuscript in red for reviewer#2 and blue for reviewer#2
We look forward to hearing from you regarding our new submission of the revised manuscript.
Wish you and the journal all the best.
With best regards
Sincerely yours,
Asit Kumar Parida
Reviewer #1:
The paper investigates the machinability of Ti-6Al-4V using solid lubricant. Turning
experiments were conducted using TiAlN coated tungsten carbide tools of varying nose radius
and cutting velocity. The influence on tool wear and surface roughness has been studied. This is
an interesting study employing solid MoS2 as the lubricant. However, there are some questions
that need to be addressed:
1. Why was a solid lubricant used directly instead of conventional cutting fluids or cutting
fluids enhanced with MoS2? Solid lubricant was compared with dry cutting only but not
with conventional cooling. Comparison with conventional cutting fluids can give
weightage to the use of solid lubricant.
Response
Thank you for your comment. Generally, the use of cutting fluids in machining industries
is harmful to the operators and pollutes the environment. The use of solid lubricants can
reduce the heat and temperature generation during machining and avoid tool failure
instead of using cutting fluids.
2. In the introduction, solid lubricant was justified for addressing issues related to
environmental pollution, sustainable development, cost optimization, and product quality.
Product quality has been assessed from the results of machining. How are the rest
justified in comparison to other cutting sustainable environments like minimum quantity
lubrication or using environment friendly cutting fluids?
Response
Thank you for your comment. Authors currently focus on the use of solid lubricants
during machining of titanium alloy and will concentrate on another sustainable
machining like MQL in future according to your suggestion.
3. Section 3.2, tool wear, starts with "During the machining of steel…" Were experiments
conducted on steel as well? Please clarify/correct.
Response
Thank you for your comment. The authors have corrected the typo mistakes.
4. Page 8, line 41: "chip serration increases with an increase in nose radius…" Why?
Response
Thank you for your comment. This can be explained by the reduction in the actual chip
thickness near the trailling edge of the tool. Similar finding were also found during
turning by researchers.[11,26]
5. Please check the equation for equivalent chip thickness in page 9.
Response
Thank you for your comment. The mistake is corrected in the manuscript.
6. Grammatical errors are present. Please correct them.
Response
Thank you for your suggestion. Authors have corrected the grammatical errors
throughout the manuscript.
Reviewer #2:
The paper is written well addressing the benefit of using MoS2 solid lubricant in direct powder
form. The following may be incorporated in the revised version:
1. Fig. 1 is not necessary, may be deleted.
Response
According to your suggestion the Fig. 1 is deleted from the manuscript.
2. Author should include a little more detail about the solid lubrication application
methodology, like stand of distance, angle of spray, velocity (if estimated) etc. The set up
shows vertical impingement, authors may clarify how it could enter the chip-tool
interaction zone.
Response
Thank you for your comment. Authors have mentioned the details in the manuscript.
(Please go through the schematic diagram)
3. Authors may consider including the following papers in references:
#"Comparison of tribological properties of MoS2 and graphite-PTFE coatings and its
impact on machining of aluminium by HSS end mills", materials and manufacturing
processes, 2015
# Molybdenum disulfide as a lubricant: A review of the fundamental knowledge. Wear
1967, 10, 422-452
Response
According to your suggestion the above papers are included in the manuscript
4. A schematic may be included clarifying the lubrication mechanism of solid lubricant.
Response
Thank you for your suggestion. A schematic diagram of solid lubricant application is
added with Fig.1
5. In the roughness plots, authors should mention that it is Ra value (Although written in the
text)
Response
According to your suggestion Ra is mentioned in the roughness plots.
6. Flank wear plots are given along with rake-wear images. These may be suitably labelled
and captioned.
Response
According to your suggestion flank wear plot is suitable labelled and captioned. Flank
wear measurement was taken in flank side during the measurement. In manuscript the
crater wear images are shown at 60 m/min. No flank wear images are not shown in the
manuscript.
7. The plots concerning the machining results may be included with complete machining
parameters.
Response
Thank you for your suggestion. Authors have labelled the plots with completer
machining parameters.
8. Language may be checked for grammatical mistakes, the first line of the abstract may be
improved.
Response
English throughout the manuscript has been improved. Please go through once
