Determination of process parameters in the laser micromilling application using Taguchi method: A case study for AISI H13 tool steel

Abstract

Laser micromilling technique is a thermal machining process which is used to remove material on the target geometry and has been widely employed in mold and die making industry. In this technique, the control factors of process such as scan speed, scan direction, frequency, and fill spacing play major affect on the surface quality. The selected quality characteristics are the mean surface roughness and milling depth. The main objective of this study is to determine the optimal milling conditions based on machining direction for minimizing the surface roughness and maximizing the milling depth. Therefore, L18 orthogonal array is constituted and subsequently signal/noise ratio and analysis of variance were employed to investigate the optimal levels of process parameters. The analysis results show that the scan speed has the highest effect on the surface roughness of which percentage contribution is 39.68% and also the beam scan direction and fill spacing have significant effects which contribute 19.67% and 16.09%, respectively. The experimental result for optimal condition is 2.23 μm. The results for milling depth show that only scan speed and fill spacing have significant effects which contribute 69.08% and 19.21%, respectively. Moreover, the scan direction has the least effect on the milling depth which can be neglected. The frequency has no effect on both surface roughness and milling depth. The result obtained from experiment at the optimal condition is 121.4 μm.