Abstract
Surface roughness parameters are important indicators to determine operating performance, tribology
behaviour, wear and tear characteristics, and service life of engineered parts including gears. This article presents
the investigation on surface roughness, and tribology and wear aspects of miniature brass gears manufactured by
abrasive water jet machining (AWJM). Experiments have been conducted based on Taguchi’s robust design
technique with L9 orthogonal array to machine external spur type miniature gears of brass having 8.4 mm pitch
diameter, 12 teeth, and 5 mm thickness. The effect of three important process parameters namely water jet
pressure, abrasive mass flow rate and stand-off distance on mean roughness depth of miniature gears are analysed.
Surface roughness is found to decrease with increase in water jet pressure and abrasive mass flow rate, and
increase with increase in stand-off distance.