Use of Bio-Composites for a Milling Machine Table

Published in: Engineering Innovations for Global Sustainability: Proceedings of the 14th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology
Date of Conference: July 20-22, 2016
Location of Conference: San Jose, Costa Rica
Authors: Jonathan Shakhmoroff
Damian Gaona
Student Papers: #003

Abstract:

Milling machines are widely used in the machining industry and use a rotary cutter to remove material from a stock piece of material in order to create a finished and fully dimensioned product. This running machine, along with the process of removing material from a workpiece, causes several types of vibrations in the system, which can cause error in obtaining the required tolerances provided by the designer. An efficient solution is to replace the machining table, but finding the proper material is difficult. Steel is the current standard but does not sufficiently reduce the vibrations, so other materials, such as tungsten and carbon-epoxy composites, were considered. Tungsten is far too expensive and heavy to use and replace, making it inefficient. Carbon-epoxy and glass-epoxy composites prove to be excellent dampers due to the friction between strands, but recycling and manufacturing composites can be expensive and potentially bad for the environment if not done properly. The objective of this project is to create a bio-composite which will both provide damping to the system and be eco-friendly. Natural flax fibers were chosen alongside an organic epoxy to create the composite material, due to their availability and mechanical properties. The flax-epoxy bio-composite was tested against aluminum, steel, and glass-epoxy. It proved to be a more effective damper than aluminum and steel due to its higher damping ratio and low density, but failed to surpass glass-epoxy due to the thickness of the flax fabric. In terms of damping ratio per unit density, flax-epoxy comes close to glass-epoxy and may even surpass it with thinner plies.