A SIMPLIFIED CUTTING FORCE MODEL FOR LIGHT-CUT BALL-END MILLING APPLICATIONS

In light-cut milling operations, specific correlations have been identified empirically between the maximum cutting force on a cutter and its associated cutting parameters, and a series of ball-end milling tests for P20 tool steel has been conducted to establish the nature of these correlations. The experimental results indicate that the maximum cutting force on a cutter can be expressed as a logarithmic function of the associated cutting parameters. This paper describes the structure and testing of a simplified cutting force model for planar milling based on these results.     

CORRELATION-BASED ESTIMATION OF CUTTING FORCE COEFFICIENTS FOR BALL-END MILLING

This article presents a methodology to estimate cutting force coefficients based on the least squares approximation using correlation factor between the estimated and measured cutting forces in order to determine the corresponding tool angular position. This method can be applied on measured cutting force data over any small interval of time that need not contain information of the time instant when the cutting tool enters the workpiece, which has been the main requirement in the conventional method. This allows a quick estimation of the cutting force coefficients regardless of the chosen cutting conditions and tool-workpiece material, which is often the case in industrial machining processes. This proposed method has been validated by comparison of cutting force coefficients obtained using conventional estimation technique for a slot ball-end milling test. Besides being useful for predictive evaluation of forces, such estimation of cutting force coefficients of the cutting force model can be useful for understanding variations in cutting process over the tool life and can assist in online monitoring and process optimization.