Study On The Tool Edge Preparation For Milling Ti6Al4V

Ti6A14V are extensively used in aerospace industry because of their excellent properties of high specific strength (strength-to-weight ratio), fracture resistant characteristics, and their exceptional resistance to corrosion. However, Ti6A14V are considered as typical difficult-to-cut materials due to their high temperature strength, high chemical reactivity and its low modulus of elasticity. During milling Ti6A14V, as a result of low conductivity and short contact length between chip and rake face, the cutting heat can not diffuse easily and only concentrate around the deformation area and the cutting edge. Thus, the temperature of the cutting edge should be very high. What's more, the load on the cutting edge is discontinuous as milling Ti6A14V, so the cutting edge could be easily worn. Cutting tool's structure, especially its tool edge preparation, becomes one of the key factors that influence the tool life and improve machining efficiency. In this paper, some researches were carried out on the tool edge preparation by FEM analysis and the edge preparation size for milling Ti6A14V was optimized aimed at the lowest cutting temperature. The influence of different edge preparation on milling Ti6A14V was investigated by analysis the cutting force, cutting temperature, chip geometries, tool life and surface quality integrity.1. The constitutive material model of Ti6A14V was built based on Power-Law.3D milling process was simplified into 2D and the model of insert was also built to reflect the characteristics of the cutting edge. At last, the FEM model was verified to be accurate due to FEM cutting forces and experiment forces.2. By comparison of cutting force and cutting temperature, the influences of different edge radius and edge composite structures on milling Ti6A14V were investigated. Aimed at the lowest cutting temperature, edge radius and edge composite structure were optimized for milling Ti6A14V.3. In the experiment about tool life of milling Ti6A14V with different edge radius, it can be seen that when the cutting length is the same the tool wear rate is different with the variation of edge radius and the cutting force is different too.4. The influence of edge preparation tool on the surface quality integrity of milling Ti6A14V was investigated in experiments of milling Ti6A14V with tools of edge preparation and edge unpreparation.