Delamination-free drilling of carbon fiber reinforced plastic with variable feed rate

A large number of drilling have been performed to assemble aircraft parts of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). Although high quality is required in machining the holes with high productivity in terms of reliability of parts, delamination often occurs around the holes in drilling. This paper presents a novel drilling method with variable feed rate to machine the delamination-free holes at a high machining rate. In the drilling, the holes are machined at the standard feed rates when the chisel moves in material; and are finished with the negative thrust at higher feed rates after the chisel exits from the workpiece. Orthogonal cutting tests were conducted to measure the cutting forces and the friction angles for the uncut chip thicknesses and the rake angles. The negative thrusts were measured in large uncut chip thicknesses at large rake angles of the lips. Then, the drilling tests were conducted to verify the change in the cutting force in the variable feed rate drilling up to 100 holes. Negative thrust component appears consistently to raise the workpiece up in the exit process even though the tool wear progresses with repeating drillings. As a result, the variable feed rate drilling remarkably controls delamination compared to the constant feed rate drilling in the 100th drilling. The cutting process in the variable feed rate drilling is compared with the constant feed rate drilling in a cutting force model based on the minimum cutting energy. The negative thrust is verified when the friction angle becomes smaller than the effective rake angle with increasing the feed rate.