The Effects of Cutting Parameters to the Surface Roughness in Low Speed Machining of Micro-milling of Titanium Alloy Ti-6Al-4V

Abstract

The demand for micro-scale products is increasing rapidly in various fields of industries such as electronics, bio-medical, optical industry, and so on. Titanium alloys especially Ti-6Al-4V is one of the commonly used in bio-medical industries because of its biocompability properties. However, poor surface quality in terms of surface roughness commonly occurs because of unappropriate cutting parameters to machine this hard to cut material. This study aims to investigate the influencing machining parameters to produce micro-products with a low level of surface roughness in Titanium Alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) material using a miniaturized micro-milling machine. Experiments carried out by micromilling process with variations in low rpm spindle speed and feed rate with a constant depth of cut using a carbide cutting tool of with a diameter of 1 mm. The machining results in the form of a 4 mm slot with a depth of 10 μm, which then measures its surface roughness. It was found that as the feed rate increases, the surface roughness also accordingly increases. On the other hand, the surface roughness decreases as the spindle speed increases.