International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Vol. 3, No.

4, 2011

Analysis of Cutting Forces during End Milling of AISI H13 Steel with Solid Flat Carbide End Mill
S. B. Chandgude1 and M. Sadaiah2
1

K. K. Wagh Institute of Engineering Education and Research, Nashik-422003, Maharashtra, India. sbchandgude@gmail.com

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Vidyavihar, Lonere- 402103, Maharashtra, India. msadaiah@yahoo.com

Abstract
The end milling process is widely used in industry because of its versatility and efficiency. Applications of end milling process can be found in many industries ranging from large aerospace manufacturers to small tool and die shops. Reasons for its popularity include the fact that it may be used for the rough and finish machining of features such as slots, pockets, peripheries, and faces of components. The surface accuracy, or machined surface error, and the surface texture produced by the process are both highly dependent on the cutting force system. The stability of the end milling process is also dependent on the cutting force system and its interaction with the dynamics of the machining system. The cutting force system is central to each of these problems, and thus it may be viewed as being the primary measure of end milling process performance. AISI H13 steel is used for variety of applications. In the present research, an attempt has been made to experimentally investigate the effects of cutting parameters on cutting forces in milling of AISI H13 steel with solid flat carbide end mill. Based on Taguchis method, four factor (cutting speed, feed, radial depth of cut, and axial depth of cut) four-level orthogonal experiments were employed. It is found that the axial depth of cut and the feed rate are the two dominant factors affecting the cutting forces. The cutting tests are carried out under dry conditions in the down milling mode. .

Keywords: cutting forces, AISI H13, Taguchi method 1. Introduction

The end milling process is widely used in industry because of its versatility and efficiency. Applications of end milling process can be found in many industries ranging from large aerospace manufacturers to small tool and die shops. Reasons for its popularity include the fact that it may be used for the rough and finish machining of features such as slots, pockets, peripheries, and faces of components. Problems which may arise or result from the end milling process include cutter breakage, the generation of a finished part which does not satisfy product design specifications, and process instability. Shank or flute breakage typically arises due to excessive levels of cutting force being applied to the end mill. The surface accuracy, or machined surface error, and the surface texture produced by the process are both highly dependent on the cutting force system. The stability of the end milling process is also dependent on the cutting force system and its interaction with the dynamics of the machining system. The cutting force system is central to each of these problems, and thus it may be viewed as being the primary measure of end milling process performance. The forces generated in metal cutting operations have long interested engineers. These forces determine machine power requirements and bearing loads, cause deflections of the part, tool or machine structure, and supply energy to machining system which may result in excessive cutting temperatures or unstable vibrations. Measured cutting forces are also sometimes used to compare the machinability of materials, especially in cases in which tool life tests cannot be performed due to time constraints or limited material supplies. It is also used for realtime sensorbased control in monitoring a cutting process and wear and failure [1].

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International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Vol. 3, No.4, 2011 Cutting tool design has a strong impact on machining performance. Properly designed tools produce parts of consistent quality and have long and predictable useful lives. An improperly designed tool may wear or chip rapidly or unpredictably, reducing productivity, increasing costs, and producing parts of deteriorating quality. Optimizing cutting tool technology has a major influence on the productivity and economics of a process. It is important to understand the cutting tool materials and geometries and their corresponding limitations with respect to the cutting conditions (speed and feed). On the average, the cutting tool cost represents about 3% the total component cost in high volume production. Therefore, a 50% increase in tool life reduces the total cost per component by 1 to 2 %. On the other hand, a 20% increase in the material removal rate could reduce the total cost per component by 15% [2]. For successful implementation of end milling, selection of suitable cutting parameters for a given cutting tool, workpiece material, and machine tool are important steps. Cutting forces are critically important in cutting operations because they correlate strongly with cutting performance such as surface accuracy, tool wear, tool breakage, cutting temperature, self excited and forced vibrations, etc. This paper presents an approach to study the influence of the machining conditions during end milling of AISI H13 with solid flat carbide end mill on the average cutting forces in the down milling mode under dry conditions.

2. Analysis of cutting forces

An end-milling process is a multi-point, interrupted cutting process, in which the cutting edge and workpiece contact is not continuous and the uncut chip thickness varies with the spindle rotation (i.e. cutting time). As shown in Figure 1, under down milling process in which the cutter rotates in the direction of the feed of the workpiece, the chip thickness decreases from the maximum to zero over a revolution. The maximum chip thickness occurs close to the point where the cutting tooth contacts the workpiece. Therefore, the chip thickness fluctuations result in periodical changes of the cutting forces acting on the tool tooth along with the entry and exit of the cutting edge [3]. During the material removal process, the tool tooth has to withstand instantaneous tangential component Ft, instantaneous radial component Fr, and instantaneous axial component Fa (cutter system). Once the local tangential Ft, radial Fr, and axial Fa cutting forces on the tooth-workpiece contact point are determined, three force components Fx, Fy, and Fz acting on the end mill (table system) in the Cartesian coordinate system can be expressed through the following transformation: =T (1)

Where (2)

The entry angle of the tooth in the down end milling operations, starting from the negative y-axis, should be (3) The tooth exits the cutting at an exit angle approximately as and the chip thickness is zero at the exit point. It should be noted that only when the cutting teeth engage with the workpiece do the three force components , , and exist, otherwise the three force components will be zero. Then, Eq.1 can be modified as follows, =T when (4)

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International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Vol. 3, No.4, 2011 As shown in Figure 1, during down milling process, the end mill starts cutting when it reaches a position where the distance from its center to the workpiece edge perpendicular to the feed direction is (5) The end mill ends the cutting when its center reaches the position of the other workpiece edge perpendicular to the feed direction and the distance L2 is equal to L1. With the width of the workpiece (W=100 mm), the radius of the end mill (r=12.5 mm), and the radial depth of cut (ae= 5 mm), the cutting length (L) in one pass is

= = 120 mm

(6)

When using the spindle rotational speed n=1274 rpm, the revolution period of the end mill (t0) and the cutting time in one cutting pass (t) are respectively, (7) and

Figure 1. Schematic view of down end-milling process and cutting length [3]

(8) The cutting time in one cutting pass is 56.50 s, which is approximately equal to 1 min. According to Figure 1, the engagement angle in one revolution can be expressed as follows, (9) When combining Equations 7 and 9, the engagement time between the tool tooth and the workpiece in one revolution is,

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International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Vol. 3, No.4, 2011 (10) For one tooth of an end mill the revolution period is approximate 47.10 ms; while the engagement time in one revolution of the end mill is only 6.95 ms. That is to say, the engagement time between the end mill and workpiece is about 1/7 of the revolution period of the end mill. Therefore, the periodical fluctuation of cutting forces caused by the chip thickness variations and the periodical entry/exit of the cutting teeth is an essential feature of milling process.

3. Experimental setup and procedure

3.1. Experimental setup
For an experiment with four factors at four levels, Taguchis design of experiment with a standard L16 (44) orthogonal array was employed to conduct the milling experiments. The orthogonal array was chosen because of the number of experimental trials required which is more efficient in handling large number of factor variables than traditional factorial design and it can yield valid conclusions over the entire region spanned by the control factors and their levels. Additionally, the orthogonal array allows determination of the contribution of each quality influencing factor. As shown in Table 1, the four factors to be considered were cutting speed, feed, radial depth of cut, and axial depth of cut respectively.

Table 1. Factors and selected levels Factor A- Cutting speed v (m/min) B- Feed fz (mm/tooth) C- Radial depth of cut ae (mm) D- Axial depth of cut (mm) 2 100 0.04 0.5 1.0 1 120 0.08 1.0 2.0 Level -1 140 0.12 3.0 3.0 -2 160 0.16 4.0 4.0

Table 2. Nominal chemical composition of AISI H13 tool steel (wt.%) C 0.32-0.45 Mn 0.20-0.50 Si 0.80-1.20 Cr 4.75-5.50 Mo 1.10-1.75 V 0.80-1.20 Ni 0-0.30 Fe Bal

Table 3. Material properties of AISI H13 tool steel at room temperature Density (kg/m3) 7,800 Youngs modulus (GPa) 210 Hardness (HRc) 50 1 Yield strength (MPa) 1,579 Area reduction (%) 23.0 Thermal conductivity (W/mK) 25.6

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3.2. Workpiece material

AISI H13 tool steel combines very good hardness with toughness and covers a wide variety of applications such as pressure die casting, extrusion, hot forging and extrusion mandrels. It can be water cooled in service and gives high temperature strength and wear resistance. Block of H13 steel 150 mm in length, 100 mm in width, and 25 mm in height was used in this study. The workpiece material was hardened and tempered to 50 HRc. The nominal chemical composition and material properties of H13 steel are given in Table 2 and 3 respectively.

3.3. Design matrix

As shown in Table 4, each row of the matrix represents one trial, and 16 milling experiments were conducted in this research. Table 4. Design matrix of experiment based on Taguchis method Expt. no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 A (v) 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -2 -2 -2 -2 B (fz) -1 2 1 -2 1 -2 -1 2 2 -1 -2 1 -2 1 2 -1 C(ae) 2 -2 -1 1 1 -1 -2 2 -1 1 2 -2 -2 2 1 -1 D (ap) -2 -1 1 2 -2 -1 1 2 -2 -1 1 2 -2 -1 1 2

Table 5. Machining conditions used for experiments Machine tool Cutting tool Software package Cutting fluid CNC milling machine, Hass make 12 mm solid carbide flat end milling cutter with four flutes Microsoft excel and Origin, for charting data and graphical analysis Dry condition

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3.4. Experimental procedures

3.4.1. Cutting force measurements: The machining conditions used for the experiments are given in Table 5. As shown in Figure 2, the cutting forces were measured using Kistler piezoelectric dynamometer (type 9257B) mounted on the machine table during milling process. The charge generated at the dynamometer was amplified using multi-channel charge amplifier (type 5070A).

Figure 2. Schematic diagram of experimental setup

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Cutting forces in one cutting period
An end milling process is a multipoint, interrupted cutting process, in which the cutting edge and workpiece contact is not continuous and the uncut chip thickness varies with the spindle rotation (i.e., cutting time). During down milling process, the chip thickness decreases from the maximum to zero over a revolution of the cutting tool. Therefore, as shown in Figure 3, the chip thickness fluctuations result in periodical changes of the cutting forces acting on the tool tooth along with the entry and exit of the cutting edge. Taking experiment 3 for example, the period of one revolution of the cutting tool is approximately equal to 24 ms; while the cutting time is less than 2 ms: Accordingly, only when the cutting teeth engage with workpiece do the three components Fx, Fy, and Fz exist, otherwise the three force components will be zero. Therefore, the periodical fluctuations of cutting forces caused by the chip thickness variations and the periodical entry exit of the cutting teeth is an essential feature of milling process. Figure 3 also presents the three cutting force components versus cutting time for a sharp tool. The experimental results all show that the normal force in the negative x-direction is more dominant of the three components and displays significantly higher magnitudes than that of the other two components in y and z directions. The peak axial force in the positive z-direction is only about half of that in x-direction while the peak feed force in the negative y-direction lies between the peak values of the other two directions. Obviously, the normal force Fx is the major signal, which can be used to monitor the cutting process.

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(a) Normal cutting force component.

(b) Feed cutting force component

(c) Axial cutting force component Figure 3. Cutting force waveforms for experiment no. 3

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International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Vol. 3, No.4, 2011 The average values of cutting periods in milling experiments are listed in Table 6. Table 6. Average cutting forces Expt. No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Fx (N) 807.9 861.0 647.1 534.5 751.6 1095.9 899.9 241.4 791.6 805.3 619.4 445.0 1679.7 659.3 524.4 528.2 Fy (N) 398.3 610.7 490.0 329.5 523.2 1000.9 578.3 144.2 664.0 453.1 513.2 212.7 1435.4 408.2 295.9 428.5 Fz (N) 380.2 437.9 320.8 285.5 364.6 644.3 377.3 73.4 447.8 394.7 294.8 218.7 818.5 315.6 240.9 226.5

Fx
1000 900 800

Fy Fz

Cutting forces F (N)

700 600 500 400 300 200 100 110 120 130 140 150 160

Cutting speed v (m/min)

(a)

Fx
1200 1100 1000

Fy Fz

Cutting forces F (N)

900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14 0.16

Feed fz (mm/tooth)

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International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Vol. 3, No.4, 2011 (b)
Fx
1100 1000 900

Fy Fz

Cutting forces F (N)

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5

Radial depth of cut ae (mm)

(c)

Fx
1200 1100 1000 900

Fy Fz

Cutting forces F (N)

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5

Axial depth of cut ap (mm)

(d) Figure 4. (a) Cutting speed (b) Feed (c) Radial depth of cut (d) Axial depth of cut, Relations between cutting forces and cutting parameters

4.2. Effects of cutting parameters on cutting forces

Figure 4, shows relation between cutting forces and cutting speed, feed, radial depth of cut, and axial depth of cut, respectively. From these figures, it can be seen that all cutting force components basically have the same changing trend with cutting parameters. They all increase with increase of cutting parameters. Figure 4(a) shows that when cutting speed ranges from 100 to 120 m/min the cutting force increases with increase of cutting speed due to an increase in strain and strain rate; while when cutting speed ranges from 120 to 140 m/min, the forces reduce with increase in the cutting speed, this is due to the thermal softening which changes the shear angle and thus the necessary plastic deformation [4]. When cutting speed increases from 140 to 160 m/min, cutting forces increase rapidly. This might be because cutting temperature increases with the increase of the cutting speed. Cutting forces increase with the increase in feed, radial depth of cut and axial depth of cut due to an increase in chip load. According to the cutting parameters employed in this research, the optimal cutting parameters for the minimal cutting forces are: v = 140m/min, fz = 0.04 mm/tooth, ae = 0.5 mm, and ap = 1.0 mm.

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5. Conclusions
The normal force Fx is the major signal, which can be used to monitor the cutting process. The minimal cutting forces can be achieved under the following combination of cutting parameters: v = 140m/min, fz = 0.04 mm/tooth, ae = 0.5 mm, and ap = 1.0 mm. Generally speaking, the axial depth of cut and the feed are the two dominant cutting parameters that affect the cutting forces.

6. References
[1] Cook, N.H., Manufacturing analysis, Addison-Wesley publishing company. USA, 1967. [2] Stephenson, D.A. and Agapiou, J.S., Metal cutting theory and practice, 1st. Indian reprint ed., CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, New York, 2010. [3] Zhang, S., Li, J.F., Sun, J. and Jiang, F., Tool wear and cutting forces variation in high-speed endmilling Ti-6Al-4V alloy, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, vol. 46, pp.69-78, 2009. [4] Gorczyca, F.E., Application of metal cutting theory, Industrial Press, New York, 1987.

Authors Profile

S. B. Chandgude is Professor in the Department of Production Engineering, K. K. Wagh Institute of Engineering Education and Research at Nashik, Maharashtra, India. He worked as a Workshop Superintendent at the same institute from September 2005 to May 2008. He graduated from Pune University, Maharashtra, India, in August 1988. He completed his post graduation from Shivaji University, Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India, in April 1998. His research interests include, cutting tool engineering, CNC machines and tool condition monitoring. He is a member of Institution of Engineers (India).

Dr. M. Sadaiah received his Ph.D. from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India, in 2003. Currently, he is working as an Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Lonere, Maharashtra, India. His research interests include, tool condition monitoring, photochemical machining and machining of advanced materials.

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