ABSTRACT
Performance evaluation of neem, tiger nut and false walnut oils with respect to their effectiveness in friction reduction in cold mild steel drawing and cold aluminum rolling operations have been carried out in this research work. While a 500 kN Denison machine was improvised for use in lieu of a laboratory draw bench for the wire drawing operation, the planestrain compression test was used to simulate rollingoperation. Sodium stearate in methyl alcohol was used as a standard of performance assessment in wire drawing while paraffin (kerosene) was used in the plane-strain compression test. From the results obtained, false walnut oil gave the best performance in both the drawing and rolling operations with an average coefficient of friction value of 0.12978 in the drawing test and a percentage reduction of 52.19 in the planestrain compression test. The results of this work also revealed that false walnut oil performed better than the standards used for assessment in both tests. The obtained coefficient of friction for drawing using neem oil, tiger nut oil and sodium stearate respectively were, 0.23042, 0.19622 and 0.16108 while the percentage reductions in plane-strain compression test for neem oil, tiger nut oil and paraffin were 47.0%, 51.5% and 41.1% respectively.