The continuous technological advance has led to the challenge of building lighter and safer vehicles, but with lower fuel consumption. Within this scenario, polymeric composites are materials currently used in different applications, where lightweight combined with high modulus of elasticity are important features. Polyamide reinforced with glass fiber face a promising future for automotive applications, thus becoming important to study the behavior of this type of material when subjected to machining processes. Among the machining processes, drilling is one of the most widely applied to composite materials. In this work the influence of feed rate, cutting speed and tool geometry on thrust force, specific cutting pressure and hole dimensional deviations is investigated. The tests were performed on unreinforced polyamide (PA6) and on polyamide reinforced with 30 wt % glass fiber (PA66-GF30) using tungsten carbide drills (K20) with different tip angles. The results clearly indicate the superior machinability of the reinforced material, compared with the unreinforced polyamide.
Composites; reinforced polymers; machinability; drilling; damage
