A

Report
On
MODELLING OF CUTTING FORCES IN PERIPHERAL MILLING
USING MECHANISTIC APPROACH

By
Shashank Pendyala

2011A4PS272P

Ankur Naik

2011A4PS183P

Prepared in Partial fulfilment of the

Design Project
Course No: ME F376

At

BIRLA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY,

PILANI
(May, 2014)

Acknowledgement
We take this opportunity to express our profound gratitude and deep
regards to Prof. Tufan Chandra Bera Sir for his exemplary guidance, monitoring
and constant encouragement throughout the course of this project. We would
like to express our special gratitude and thanks to our institute for giving us this
opportunity to take up this course.

Milling Process
The milling operation is an intermittent cutting process using a cutter with one
or more teeth. A milling cutter is held in a rotating spindle, while the work piece
clamped on the table is linearly moved toward the cutter. Each milling tooth
therefore traces a trochoidal path, producing varying but periodic chip thickness
at each tooth passing interval. Depending on the work piece geometry, different
milling cutters and machines are used. In this section, the mechanics of the
milling process are presented for simple face milling operations. Mechanics of
other milling operations are modelled by geometrically extending the mechanics
of face milling. Double negative tools are shock resistant in heavy-duty face
milling operations. Rigid and high-power milling machines are suitable for
heavy machining with negative cutters. For accurate and light milling
operations, double-positive milling cutters are ideal. Negative positive tools
produce a good surface finish and are efficient in removing the chips from the
insert pockets. There are three types of milling operations used in practice:
face milling operations, in which entry and exit angles of the milling
cutter relative to the workpiece are nonzero;
up-milling operations, in which the entry angle is zero and the exit angle
is nonzero; and
down-milling operations, in which the entry angle is not zero and the exit
angle is zero.
Both up- and down-milling operations are called peripheral or end milling
operations. In milling the instantaneous chip thickness (h) varies periodically as
a function of time-varying immersion. The chip thickness variation can be
approximated as
h() = c sin ,

where c is the feed rate (mm/rev-tooth) and is the instantaneous angle of

immersion. First, the helix angle is considered to be zero, which is the case in
face milling operations with inserted cutters. Tangential ( ()), radial ( ()),
and axial ( ()) cutting forces are expressed as a function of varying uncut
chip area (ah()) and edge contact length (a) as follows:

where

, and

() =

ah() +

a,

() =

ah() +

a,

() =

ah() +

a,

are the cutting force coefficients contributed by the

shearing action in tangential, radial, and axial directions, respectively, and

,

, and

are the edge constants. If we assume zero nose radius and

zero approach angle on the inserts, the axial components of the cutting forces
become zero (

= 0). The cutting coefficients are assumed to be constant for a

toolwork material pair, and they can be evaluated either mechanistically from
milling tests or by using the classical oblique cutting transformations. They are
sometimes expressed as a nonlinear function of the instantaneous or average
chip thickness ha. The average chip thickness per revolution is calculated from
the swept zone as

The instantaneous cutting torque ( ) on the spindle is where D is the diameter

of the milling cutter. Horizontal (i.e., feed), normal, and axial components of the
cutting forces acting on the cutter are as follows:
() =

cos

sin ,

() = +

sin

cos ,

() = + .
It must be noted that the cutting forces are produced only when the cutting tool
is in the cutting zone, that is,
where

and

(),

(),

() >0 when

are the cutter entry and exit angles, respectively. Another

important point is that there may be more than one tooth cutting simultaneously
depending on the number of teeth on the cutter and the radial width of cut. The
tooth spacing angle

(or cutter pitch angle) is given as

=

where N is the number of teeth on the cutter. There will be more than one tooth
cutting simultaneously when the swept angle (
cutter pitch angle (i.e.,

>

) is larger than the

). When more than one tooth cuts

simultaneously, the contribution of each tooth to total feed and normal forces
must be considered. It must also be noted that, because each tooth will be away
from its neighbouring tooth by the amount of pitch angle, the uncut chip
thickness removed by each cutting edge will be different at an instantaneous
position of the cutter. We can formulate the total feed, normal, and axial forces
as

when ever

. Each term in the summation block represents the

contribution of each tooth to the cutting forces. If the tooth j is out of the

immersion zone, it contributes zero to total forces. The instantaneous resultant

cutting force on the cutter (or work piece) is given as

Instantaneous cutting torque on the spindle is

where D is the diameter of the cutter. The cutting power ( ) drawn from the
spindle motor is

where V = Dn is the cutting speed and n is the spindle speed. For a given set of
cutting conditions, the engineer may be required to predict the maximum cutting
power, torque, and cutting forces required from the machine tool spindle and
feed drives. The cutting forces, torque, and power are uniformly periodic at
tooth passing frequency. Periodic cutting forces dynamically load and unload
the machine tool structure, work piece, and the cutter at each tooth period. Halfimmersion (i.e., b = D/2) up- and down milling forces have opposite trends. The
chip load starts with zero and gradually increases to maximum at the exit in upmilling; hence, forces have the same trend. However, the tooth experiences
maximum chip load during entry followed by a gradual decrease of the chip

load and, hence, the cutting forces. Manufacturing engineers are advised to use
up-milling operations for heavy metal removal rates where the shock loading is
reduced. For light finish cuts, down-milling is preferred to obtain a smooth
surface finish.

Mechanics of Helical End Mills

Periodic loading causes cyclic mechanical and thermal stresses on the tool,
which leads to a shorter tool life. Helical end mills are used to dampen the sharp
variations in the oscillatory components of the milling forces, and they are used
when the depth of cut is large, but the width of cut is small. Their primary
function is peripheral milling, where the walls of parts are the target finished
surface. The helix on the cutter provides a gradually increasing chip load along
the helical flutes of the end mill. If the helix angle on the cutter is , a point on
the axis of the cutting edge will be lagging behind the end point of the tool. The
lag angle ( ) at the axial depth of cut (z) is found as
and

When the bottom point of a reference flute of the end mill is at immersion angle
, a cutting edge point that is axially z [mm] above will have an immersion
angle of ( ). Obviously, the chip thickness removed along the flutes axis
will also be different at each point.

Prediction of Cutting Forces-Algorithm

The ideology is to divide the cutting tool into numerous discs and calculate the
cutting forces on each disc. Every disc is again divided into segments. In the
code the height of each disc is taken as 0.0001m and one segment per degree
making a total of 360 segments per disc.
The inputs such as the Axial depth of cut (a), Radial depth of cut (c), Feed (f),
the Cutting co-efficients Ktc, Kte, Krc, Kre which are obtained from experimental
data, Helix angle of the tool (beta), Diameter of the cutter (D), Number of
cutting edges (N) are given to the program. The entry angle (phi_st) and the exit
angle (phi_ex) of the cutter are also specified in the code.
To add up all the segments, the angular increment (deltaPhi) and the increment
in depth of cut to represent each disc (deltaA) are specified.
The values of the 3 forces feed force Fx(m), normal force Fy(m) and tangential
force Ft(m) are initialised to zero.
A for loop is written to get the immersion angle of flutes bottom edge and is
defined as phiI. Another for loop is written inside the loop to get the
immersion angle for each cutting edge (defined as phi1). A third for loop is used
inside the second loop to update the immersion angle due helix for each axial
element (defined as phi2). The fourth for loop inside the third loop is used to
add all the forces from each segment and disc. The chip thickness (h) at every
point is calculated using the updated phi2 which is placed inside the 4th loop.
To find the variation of forces on the section of cutter engagement on the work
piece, a graph is plotted for the updated immersion angle against the total
cutting force at each point. But this force is made negative of the obtained force
as it is equal to magnitude on the tool but in the opposite direction.This is
placed in the fourth for loop to ensure every force is plotted.

Cutting Forces-Flow chart

Results
The forces graph for 1 cutter rotation is obtained.
Red- Feed force (Fx)
Black- Normal force (Fy)
Green- Tangential force (Ft)
The graph is observed to be periodic which proves it as theoretically correct.

Fig: Force vs. Cutter rotation angle.

The variation of forces on the cutter engagement section is obtained at a
particular instant. For example at the angular increment of r=10 degrees the
graph is as follows:

At r=50, the graph is:

References

 Kline, W. A., "The Prediction of Cutting Forces and Surface Accuracy

for the End Milling Process," Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois at
UrbanaChampaign, 1982.
X.-W. Liu, K. Cheng, D. Webb, X.-C. Luo, Prediction of cutting force
distribution and its influence on dimensional accuracy in peripheral
milling, School of Engineering, Leeds Metropolitan University, City
Campus, Leeds LS1 3HE, UK
Text Book by Yusuf Altintas, Manufacturing Automation , Fellow of
the Royal Society of Canada and NSERC Pratt & Whitney Canada
Research Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the
Manufacturing Automation Laboratory at the University of British
Columbia
Professor B. Balachandran, Dynamics of Low Immersion Milling,
Sigmund Max Young, Master of Science, 2008
Oscar Gonzalo, Jokin Beristain, Haritz Jauregi, Carmen Sanz, A method
for the identification of the specific force coefficients for mechanistic
milling simulation
Abhijit Bhattacharyya, John K. Schueller, Brian P. Mann, John C.
Ziegert, Tony L. Schmitz, Fred J. Taylor, Norman G. Fitz-Coy, A closed
form mechanistic cutting model for helical peripheral milling of ductile
metallic alloys.