Abstract: Dry electrostatic cooling (DESC) assisted machining is a new green manufacturing method, which uses ionized air flow as a lubricating and cooling medium. The main reason of the lubricating and cooling comes from the complex physical and chemical reaction of the active ions and ozone in the ionized air flow on the cutting area. Based on the self-designed ion generator and ion concentration measurement device, experiments are designed to analyze the influence of all discharge parameters to ion transport efficiency and ozone concentration in the DESC. The results show that the ion transport efficiency increasing with larger discharge power, higher gas pressure, smaller distance between the nozzle and pinpoint and bigger diameter of nozzle. And the higher ozone concentration is obtained when the ozone concentration determinator just right faced the nozzle as close as possible, the nozzle diameter D is from 3 mm to 4 mm and the air pressure p is in the range of 0.2 MPa to 0.3 MPa and the gap between the nozzle and pinpoint rn is 0 mm. The optimal parameters above are adopted in the DESC assisted cutting experiment to hardened steel GCr15, results show that with the DESC, the cutting force is reduced by 7.3%～25.4%, the tool wear is decreased by 55%, and the tool life is 1.5～3.0 times to the dry cutting, and the DESC effect is improved with the increase of the cutting speed and the cutting temperature.

Key words: Cutting force, Dry electrostatic cooling, Efficiency of ion transport, Ozone concentration, Tool wear