Currently, the manufacturing sector is adapting sustainable techniques to minimise the damage to the environment. Minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) is one of the sustainable techniques to address the ecological and economic issues. In MQL atomised mixture of cutting fluid and compressed air is injected into the machining zone. The effectiveness of MQL technique primarily depends on the quality of the mixture which mainly depends upon the droplet quality. In this work, a combination of microscopy and image processing techniques has been used to ascertain the quality of droplets. The raw droplet features captured with a stereo-zoom microscope and analysed by measuring the average droplets size and number of droplets per unit area. To ensure the enhanced effectiveness of MQL parameters like droplets quality, air pressure, flow rate and nozzle positions have been optimised experimentally. Further, obtained optimal MQL parameters have been used in the grindability study of Inconel 718. © Copyright 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.