Aluminium was a late comer to the industry due to the fact that its commercial production began only towards the end of 19th century. It is the third most abundant metal in the earth's crust, which is combined with oxygen and other elements in its natural form. It has a face centred cubic structure and is easier to machine. The most widely used non-ferrous metals in engineering are aluminium alloys, which are widely used in the automotive and aerospace industries. These alloys possess some important characteristics like good ductility and corrosion resistance, high strength to weight ratio and can be heat treated to enhance the mechanical properties while maintaining low weight. The present work mainly focuses on the study of mechanical properties by conducting the Impact and Hardness tests on the aluminium alloy Al6463 by varying the compositions of the two major elements, Mg and SI in the alloy. The Impact energy absorbed and hardness of the aluminium alloy Al6463 by varying the Magnesium composition b/w (0.5 to 0.875%) and Silicon composition b/w (0.2 to 0.575%) is studied in this research work. The specimens were prepared as per ASTM standard size for hardness and impact tests. The results indicate that highest impact strength of the alloy Al6463 was obtained for 0.750% Mg and 0.2% Si compositions whereas the highest hardness was obtained for Mg compositions of 0.5% and 0.875% Mg and SI composition of 0.575%. Drilling of Al6463 alloy was carried out with the experiments conducted based on Taguchi's L16 Orthogonal Array to get the optimized values of the drilling parameters. The drilling parameters selected were feed, speed, depth of cut, drill bit diameter, and material composition, which were varied in 4 levels. The main effect plots were studied to determine the influence of the drilling parameters on machining responses, such as surface roughness, material removal rate, machining time, machining force, and machining power.
