Tool Inclination Angle Change Rate Control in Five-Axis Flat-End Milling

Abstract

Five-axis milling is used in the machining of complex shaped surfaces in a wide range of industries. In five-axis milling, one can adjust inclination angle to adapt such machining condition, e.g. to give high material removal and/or to avoid gouging. Choosing an appropriate inclination angle is difficult especially for complex parts with varying surface curvature. On the one hand, a small inclination angle is recommended to have good surface roughness and small scallop height. On the other hand, some regions may need much larger minimum inclination angle compared to the others to avoid gouging. The trade off for this is to have, in practice, a varying minimum (which is considered to be optimal) inclination angle along the tool path, so that while machining, the tool is dynamically adapted to be as close as possible to the surface without gouging. However, applying inclination angle change over some distances influences the quality of machined surface. This paper presented a method to control such inclination angle change to improve part accuracy. Some experimental were conducted to see the results and compared with the one when inclination angle change is not controled. The propose method effectively reduces the surface deviation thus improve part accuracy. More details about this study are presented in the paper.