Analysis and development of elliptical tool path in trochoidal milling

Abstract

Trochoidal milling has been developed to extend the cutting tool life as compared to conventional milling. It is widely used in the machining of slots and corners of molds and dies. There are several tool paths typically used in trochoidal milling such as true, circular, variable-feed, and variable-step trochoidal tool paths. However, these paths suffer from low material removal rates, low surface qualities, high CPU processing times, and/or the requirement of high-dynamic machine tools. Elliptical trochoidal tool path showed its capability to improve the material removal rate, but the expected low surface quality of the produced slot. In this paper, the elliptical tool path will be analyzed analytically and experimentally. The effect of elliptical tool path on material removal rate, cutting forces, walls waviness, and surface roughness have been investigated. A novel linear elliptical-based tool path has been proposed to enhance the elliptical tool path performance by improving both material removal rate and surface quality. A Performance index has been utilized to evaluate the performance of these processes. An analytical model for the local maximum chip thickness in elliptical tool path has been conducted to correlate this path with the cutting forces. The slot walls waviness has been modeled based on the cutting tool path geometry and validated experimentally with error less than 11%. The experimental results showed that the elliptical tool path improved the material removal rate by 11%, with a slight reduction in the maximum resultant cutting force by 3%. On the other hand, the walls waviness and surface roughness have been increased by 45% and 38% respectively as compared to the typical true trochoidal tool path. The introduction of linear paths at the elliptical path sides in the linear-elliptical tool path improved the performance index about 18 times by improving the material removal rate, waviness, and surface quality by 5%, 300%, and 74% respectively, without a significant effect on cutting forces. Therefore, the novel linear-elliptical paths are promising tool paths in increasing the performance of trochoidal milling due to the improved material removal rate, walls waviness, and surface quality, without a significant effect on cutting forces, which will improve the process machinability and cost-effectiveness.