State of the art in cutting modelling with ball end mill

Abstract

Ball-end milling has been more used in the machining of free form surfaces such as those encountered on dies, moulds and aeronautical sectors. The knowledge of the cutting forces is an important step in selecting appropriate cutting conditions to reduce excessive tool wear and tool deflection in order to increase the part accuracy and the tool life. On the other hand, various parameters influence the cutting forces in ball end milling, such as the cutting geometry, the chip geometry, the cutting temperature and the tool wear. In this paper, a bibliographic synthesis of the different cutting force modelling approaches in ball end milling process is introduced to conveniently calculate the cutting geometry, the chip geometry, the cutting temperature, the tool wear, the stresses and the cutting forces. Several empirical and analytical available methods are discussed in this paper.