Tool Quality Life during Ball End Milling of Titanium Alloy Based on Tool Wear and Surface Roughness Models

Abstract

The prediction and control of milling tool service performance is critical for milling tool design and machining. However, the existing prediction model can hardly quantify tool performance, or precisely describe the relationship between the tool performance and the design or milling parameters. This study redefines the tool lifetime as a function of surface roughness and proposes a new geometric analysis method based on a time-varying wear model. The proposed method can be utilized to evaluate the relationship between tool wear and lifetime. The surface roughness, with respect to tool service performance, is expressed as a time-varying model of the tool and processing parameters. After experimental validation, the influence factors were analyzed through simulation. A generalized method for milling tool design was proposed and successfully applied to a tool performance design case, on a theoretical level. Additionally, the research results prove that basing the tool milling quality life on the surface roughness is extremely feasible and necessary.