PREDICTION AND EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF CUTTING FORCES DURING MACHINING OF PRECISION EXTERNAL THREADS

External thread cutting is a complex 3-D process in which the cutting conditions vary over the thread cutter profile. It is accepted as a mature; however, heavily experience based technology and there are few academic work published. Determining the cutting forces during machining is crucial to explain formation of the surface layer, residual stresses, selection of the most appropriate machine tool and optimizing the process. This investigation is an attempt to predict thread cutting forces by dividing the thread chip into three parts, one thread root and two side faces. Variation of the cutting parameters including the shear angle, mean cutting temperature and friction force on the flank face of the tool along the thread tool root and sides are determined. In the thread root and sides, chip compression ratios for the V-shaped single piece and separately cut chip zones are measured and cutting forces are calculated and compared for precision metric thread cutting on a SAE 4340 steel bar.