States that small‐ to medium‐sized manufacturers are finding the ISO 9000 standards difficult to implement. Discusses a research project which investigates the factors influencing the process of ISO 9000 certification for these manufacturers and identifies the critical issues inhibiting its implementation. Uses the findings of the research project to formulate a strategy, which has been proved successful in a number of cases, to assist small‐ to medium‐sized manufacturing companies in obtaining ISO 9000 certification.

Variation of cutting forces has been investigated and correlated with the development of tool wear during dry machining of Ti-6Al-4V alloy at cutting speeds of 150 and 220 m/min, respectively. Both the average and maximum flank wear increased more significantly with volume of material removed at higher cutting speed. The tool failure mode is flank wear at both cutting speeds; however, the mechanisms for the excessive flank wear are different. The average width of flank wear reaches the criterion at cutting speed of 150 m/min after 57.2 cm3 of material has been removed as a result of the gradual recession of cutting edge due to crater wear, which led to significant rise of feed force only at the end of tool life. Both average width and maximum width of flank wear exceeds the criteria at cutting speed of 220 m/min after 20.8 cm3 of material has been removed because of severe plastic deformation of cutting edge at the nose radius, which resulted in dramatic increase in all three components of cutting forces at the end of tool life. The cutting edge at the nose radius was pushed up from the flank face in the chip flow direction due to the oversized built-up edge-induced compressive stress applied from the flank face.

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Thin-wall machining of monolithic parts allows better quality parts to be manufactured in less time. This brings advantages, particularly in inventory management and manufacturing efficiency. However, due to poor stiffness of thin-wall parts, deformation is more likely to occur in the machining process, which results in dimensional form errors. This paper describes a new methodology for prediction of wall deflection during machining thin-wall features with reduced analysis time from weeks to hours. The prediction methodology is based on a combination of the finite-element method and statistical analysis. It consists of a feature-based approach to parts creation, finite-element analysis of material removal, and statistical regression analysis of deflection associated with cutting parameters and component attributes. The prediction values have been validated by machining tests on titanium parts and show good agreement between simulation model and experimental data.

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