Increasing production quality and minimizing costs in machining process have become an important aspect for green machining. In order for this to be sustained, high concern towards human health and high environmental awareness has resulted to the minimization and elimination of cutting fluids. Therefore, this research project aims at investigating the feasibility of some selected nano-particles dispersed in water as the base fluids. This is deemed a promising solution due to cooling and lubricating attributes of nano-fluids. In this case Al2O3, TiO2 and SiO2 nanoparticles were individually dispersed in water and then used to determine the variation of temperature with machining time and also the surface morphology of chip formation observed from mild steel subjected to an end milling operation in a vertical milling machine. Two pass end milling operation was carried out on the work piece while monitoring temperature response at 30 seconds interval for each trial of experiment with K thermocouple. The mean temperature distribution result obtained were 65.977ºC, 37.542ºC, 36.868ºC and 36.5796ºC for dry, TiO2, SiO2 and Al2O3 water based nano-fluids. The results showed that Al2O3 water base nano-coolant performed better in all the 5g/L nanoparticle concentration, nano-fluids in terms of heat transfer because it had the least mean temperature when compared to dry machining. In conclusion, 5g/L concentration of nano-coolants were efficient in machining but can be improved further by optimization.
