Chatter failure comparison for high-speed milling of aerospace GH4099 with silicon nitride ceramic end mills: A laboratory scale investigation

Abstract

Chatter generated in the high-speed cutting process can seriously limit the machining efficiency and affect the surface machining quality, which urgently needs to be controlled. Aiming at brittle ceramic end mills that are very sensitive to vibration, a strategy based on the modal experimental method is proposed to construct effective and accurate stability lobe diagram (SLD) for chatter prediction and failure analysis in this work. Firstly, the tool tip frequency response function (FRF) of four kinds of self-developed ceramic end mills and commercial cemented carbide end mills with the same structure are established by means of hammering modal experiments, and the modal parameters are solved and identified. Then, based on our established high-speed milling chatter prediction model, the milling force coefficients are obtained by linear regression analysis and calculation, thereby the milling SLDs of five end milling tools are developed. Finally, a series of high-speed side milling experiments are carried out using consistent cutting conditions. The results show that the constructed SLDs can effectively predict the chatter failure region and milling stability for five kinds of end mills, and four ceramic milling tools exhibit more excellent chatter suppression performance according to frequency domain analysis of vibration signals and the observation of workpiece surface vibration marks, in which the S4 ceramic milling tool presents the most significant high-speed milling stability.