Experimental Investigation on Machinability of Aluminum Alloy during Dry Micro Cutting Process Using Helical Micro End Mills with Micro Textures

Abstract

Aluminum alloy material is widely used in the electronics, weapons, aviation and aerospace industries, due to its medium strength, good corrosion resistance, good toughness and excellent oxidation properties. With the trend of product miniaturization, micro cutting has become the mainstream technique for fabricating micro parts and components, so it is very meaningful and vital to work on removing the cutting fluid from the micro cutting process and make it totally sustainable and eco-friendly. In this work, an attempt has been made to fabricate micro textures onto the rear surface of helical micro end mills with diameters of less than 1 mm. Micro textures in the form of grooves were fabricated using a noncontact low speed wire electrical discharge turning technique. Dry micro cutting experiments were carried out on an aluminum alloy material using helical micro end mills with micro textures and the dry micro cutting surface quality and tool wear have been investigated. The influence of dry micro cutting parameters on the surface roughness parameters were also investigated. Experimental results showed that the Sa and Sq can be reduced to be about 1.56 μm and 2.08 μm, respectively. Contrasting results indicate that the implantation of micro textures does not deteriorate the dry micro cutting surface but improves the machined surface consistency of an aluminum alloy workpiece. The tool wear on helical micro end mills with micro textures involved in the dry micro cutting process of Al 6061 mainly include rear frictional wear, oxidation wear and diffusion wear.

Influence of Lubrication Status on Milling Performance of Bionic Micro-Textured Tools

“…In general, a complete milling motion consists of a rotary motion of the tool, which is held on the spindle, and a linear motion of the workpiece, which is held in a fixture. When milling starts, the main working area of the tool is the front face of the cutter, so the friction is mainly concentrated on the milling cutter surface [27][28][29]. Therefore, to place the micro-texture structure on the front face of the milling cutter, the first step is to determine the effective working area of the tool.…”

“…friction is mainly concentrated on the milling cutter surface [27][28][29]. Therefore, to place the micro-texture structure on the front face of the milling cutter, the first step is to determine the effective working area of the tool.…”

Minimization Method for 3D Surface Roughness Evaluation Area

“…In quite many studies important information is neglected, which means that the experiment cannot be replicated. Such problems are for example no information on evaluation area [32,33], the cut-off or filtering method [34,35], or all of these [36,37].…”