Abstract
CFRP use in aerospace applications has seen a dramatic increase over the last decade. The slotting/routing process is used to trim excess material from cured CFRP panels in wing manufacture. The work presented details the effect of different slotting parameters, tool materials (WC & PCD) and cutting environment (chilled air & dry) on the surface roughness and integrity of machined CFRP laminates when employing an L16 fractional factorial Taguchi experiment. Scanning electron micrographs and 3D topographic maps show the influence of fibre orientation with respect to the cutting direction. Thermal damage (burning & resin melt) were minimised using chilled air. Use of PCD tooling provided significantly increased productivity compared to coated WC with workpiece surface roughness of ∼3.6μm Sa at 200m/min cutting speed and 0.03mm/tooth feed rate.
Highlights
Carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) composites are increasingly being used for a wide range of applications in the automotive and aerospace industries, owing to their superior physical/mechanical properties relative to weight over traditional materials such as steel and aluminium (CFRP is ~70% and 40% lighter respectively) while being only ~ 20% more expensive [1]
Previous studies have found that high cutting speeds in tandem with low feed rates generally resulted in improved surface quality when edge milling due to the lower amount of mechanical/thermal damage induced [5, 6]
The best surface roughness produced using polycrystalline diamond (PCD) end mills was with the CMX-850 grade where an Ra/Sa of 3.60μm/3.65μm was obtained with a new tool (Test 13), this test had to be stopped after 16,400mm cut length due to burning of the workpiece
Summary
Carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) composites are increasingly being used for a wide range of applications in the automotive and aerospace industries, owing to their superior physical/mechanical properties relative to weight over traditional materials such as steel and aluminium (CFRP is ~70% and 40% lighter respectively) while being only ~ 20% more expensive [1]. Work in the early 1990’s by Hocheng et al [2] showed that there was a relationship between the cutting mechanisms (buckling, bending or shear depending on fibre orientation with respect to machining direction) and resulting surface roughness, when milling unidirectional CFRP. They found that best results were obtained when fibres were parallel (0°) to the tool feed. The present work aims to study the effect of operating parameters, tool materials and cutting environment on resulting workpiece surface roughness and integrity following slotting of CFRP
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