Surface Roughness and Tool Wear in Edge Trimming of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP): Variation in Tool Geometrical Design

Abstract

Composite materials such as carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRPs) for product structures have been steadily increasing due to the superior material properties such as high strength, low weight and corrosion resistance especially in the aerospace industry. This research initiated to investigate the effect of a various router or burrs tool geometrical feature towards surface roughness as well as tool wear during edge trimming process on a specific CFRP material. CFRP panel which measured in 3.25 mm thickness with 28 plies in total has been chosen to be the main study material. There were three various types of tool geometries made of un-coated carbide with the same diameter, 6.35 mm which vary in a number of flute and helix angle are successfully studied. Surface roughness measurement was taken using Mitutoyo Surftest SJ-410. Optical microscope, Nikon MM-800 is utilized to further observe the impact on the tool wear of the cutting edges. The result reveals that tool type 3 (T3) resulted in the minimized surface roughness with respect to the overall averaged Ra value whilst tool Type 1 (T1) achieved the highest surface roughness value. Meanwhile, the tool type 2 (T2) falls in the middle between the rests of two others type of tool. Observation of tool wear illustrated a clear fractured tool observed on the T1 compared to the T3 which the tooltip of the pyramidal cutting edge was still obviously intact.