The present trend in the manufacturing industry is to make machining processes more environment friendly by
adopting topractices such as dry machining, minimum usage of cutting fluid, and usage of non-reactivegas based
coolants etc., The concept of Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL)has been suggested by several researchers long
time back as a cause for addressing the environmental, healthand economic issues related with conventional bulk
cooling processes. The MQL technique consists of atomizing a very small quantity of cutting fluid into fine droplets.
In other words, the effectiveness of MQL system depends on the quality of these droplets. This paper presents the
combination of microscopy and image processing techniques to ascertain the quality of droplets,by spraying the
MQL fluidonto an acrylic sheet. The raw droplet features arecaptured with stereo zoom microscopeandanalyzed by
measuring the average droplets size and number of droplets per unit area. Reliable MQL application is achieved
when the MQL parameters like the distribution of the droplets,the applied carrier gas air pressure, fluid flow rate,
nozzle tip to machining zone distance, and the angle at which the nozzle keptis optimal.The optimal MQL
conditions as obtained from theseresults have been usedto improve the grindability of Ti-6Al-4V.