Study of the Uncut Chip in 5 Axes Ball Nose End Milling for the Fourth Quadrant of the Tool Inclination

Abstract

The ball nose end milling process, which use a ball nose cutter, is very complex and, generates a pronounced area variation of the cross section in the uncut chip. In this sense, the current paper looks into and assesses some aspects regarding the geometric simulation of the chip generating mechanism in 5 axes ball nose end milling. The influence of tool inclination, however, was not considered in the machining strategy, starting with the tool path program in CAM software, which allows the management of various ways of tool path generation, but cannot decide which one is the best. The present study advances, with minimal approximation, a geometrical method to establish the volume of the uncut chip and area variation of the cross section, obtained in 3D-CAD by four surfaces intersection [1]. Both rotations in 5 axes are considered for the tool and degree range is 0 to 30 for rotary axis A and 0 to-30 for rotary axis B (A+B-in fourth geometrical quadrant).