Stainless steel (SS) is used for many commercial and industrial applications
owing to its high resistance to corrosion. It is too hard to machine due to its
high strength and high work hardening property. A surface property such as
surface roughness (SR) is critical to the function-ability of machined
components. SS is generally regarded as more difficult to machine material and
poor SR is obtained during machining. In this paper an attempt has been made
to investigate the SR produced by CNC turning on austenitic stainless steel
(AISI316) and martensitic stainless steel (AISI410) by different cases of coated
cutting tool used at dry conditions. Multilayered coated with TiCN/Al2O3,
multilayered coated with Ti(C, N, B) and single layered coated with TiAlN
coated cutting tools are used. Experiments were carried out by using Taguchi’s
L27 orthogonal array. The effect of cutting parameters on SR is evaluated and
optimum cutting conditions for minimizing the SR are determined. Analysis of
variance (ANOVA) is used for identifying the significant parameters affecting
the responses. Confirmation experiments are conducted to validate the results
obtained from optimization.