Study of the Effect of Tool Orientation on Surface Roughness in Five-Axis Milling of 300M Steel

Abstract

The tool position deviation will affect the surface quality, especially for ultra high strength and high hardness materials, such as aircraft landing gear, engine impeller of high strength and high hardness of the hard machining aviation parts. The 300M steel is a kind of low alloy medium carbon martensitic reinforced super high strength steel, which is a common material for aircraft landing gear workpiece. The material has a strength of 1900-2100 MPa and hardness of 50 HRC after heat treatment. This material is a typical difficult-to-machine material and can produce large cutting resistance in cutting, resulting in larger tool deviation and vibration, and affects the surface quality of workpiece. Aiming at its complex processing technology, it is particularly important to study the relationship between the surface quality and the process parameters in multi axis milling. The tool orientation, which is represented by the lead angle and the tilt angle of the tool, is representative and influential process parameter. Therefore, experimental study is conducted to reveal the relationship. The surface roughness of the workpiece after multi axis NC machining is measured accurately. The effect of tool orientation on surface roughness is analysed based on the experiment data. The result shows that it is of great significance to optimize the tool orientation, which is represented by the lead angle and the tilt angle of the tool, to improve surface quality.