Cutting quality and production cleanliness are main aspects to be considered in the machining process, and determining the optimal cutting parameters is a significant measure to reduce energy consumption and optimize surface quality. In this paper, 304 stainless steel is adopted as the research objective. The regression models of the specific cutting energy, surface roughness, and microhardness are constructed and the inherent influence mechanism between cutting parameters and output responses are analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA). The desirability analysis method is introduced to perform the multi-objective optimization for low energy consumption (LEC) mode and low surface roughness (LSR) mode. Optimal combination of process parameters with composite desirability of 0.925 and 0.899 are obtained in such two modes respectively. As indicated by the results of multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA), genetic algorithm (GA) combined with weighted-sum-type objective function and experiment, the relative deviation values are within 10%. Moreover, the results also reveal that the feed rate is the most significant factor affecting the three responses, while the correlation of cutting depth is less noticeable. The effect of low feed rate on microhardness is primarily related to the mechanical load caused by extrusion, and the influence at high feed rate is determined by plastic deformation.
Keywords: 304 stainless steel; cutting parameter; desirability analysis; microhardness; multi-objective optimization; specific cutting energy; surface roughness.