Experimental and numerical studies on the performance of alloyed carbide tool in dry milling of aerospace material

Abstract

Titanium alloy is widely used in the aerospace industry for applications requiring high strength at elevated temperature and high mechanical resistance. The difficulty of dislocation motion through the microstructure is responsible for its high yield strength. However, the main problems encountered when machining titanium alloy are the low material removal rate and the short tool life. This study investigated the suitability of uncoated cemented carbide tools in ball-end milling of the aerospace titanium alloy Ti-6242S. The experiments were carried out under dry cutting condition. Cutting speeds in the range of 60–150 m/min were considered. The axial and radial depths of cut were kept constant at 2.0 and 8.8 mm, respectively, and the feed rate values of 0.1 and 0.15 mm/tooth were selected. SEM analysis has been carried out on the worn tools and shows that flank wear and excessive chipping on the flank edge are the main tool failure modes. For both feed rates, the results demonstrate that the higher the cutting speed the better is the surface finish. The FEM simulation provides good results on modelling of chip formation and can be helpful to calculate the contact parameters and to understand the tool wear mechanisms when dry machining aerospace titanium alloys.