On milling of thin-wall conical and tubular workpieces

Abstract

Thin-wall tubular-geometry workpieces have been widely applied in aircraft and medical industries. However, due to the special geometry of this kind of workpieces and induced poor machinability, the desired accuracy of machining tends to be greatly degraded, no matter what type of metal-cutting task such as milling, drilling or turning is undertaken. Though numerous research reports are available that the tool path can be planned on the basis of preset surface profile before actual milling operation is performed, it is still difficult to predict the real-time surface profile errors for peripheral milling of thin-wall tubular workpieces. Instead of relying on tool path planning, this research is focused on how to real-time formulate the appropriate applied cutting torque via feedback of spindle motor current. On the other hand, a few suitable cutting conditions which are able to prevent potential break/crack of thin-wall workpieces and enhance productivity but almost retain the same cutting quality is proposed in this research. To achieve this goal, estimated surface profile error on machined parts due to deflections caused by both tool and workpiece is studied at first. Traditionally, by adjusting cutting parameters such as feed rate or cut depth, the deflection of tool or workpiece can be expected not to exceed the specified limit. Instead, an effective feedback control loop is proposed by this work for applying real-time appropriate applied cutting torque to prevent potential break/crack of the thin-wall conical workpieces. The torque estimation approach by spindle motor current feedback and the corresponding fuzzy logic controller are employed. Compared with constant cutting torque during milling operation in tradition manner, it is observed that the time consumption of milling cycle by aid of the aforesaid fuzzy logic controller is greatly shortened while the resulted cutting accuracy upon finish of workpiece can be almost retained.