13-10-2017

MILLING OPERATION

• In milling operation, material removal is achieved by a rotary cutting tool

with a number of cutting teeth rotating about a fixed axis.

• The workpiece is fed pass the cutter and each tooth removes the material
during interaction with the workpiece.

• The feed motion is provided to the workpiece and the cutting speed to the
cutter. The process involves intermittent cutting with each tooth producing
the chip of variable thickness.

• The milling operation is broadly classified as plain (or peripheral) and face
(or end) milling.

• When the cutter velocity during peripheral milling is in opposite sense to

the feed motion, the process is called up milling and when they are in the
same sense, the operation is called down milling.

• In up milling, the chip thickness is zero at the start of the cut and increases
to a maximum value just before the tooth disengages the workpiece, while
in down milling, the chip thickness is maximum at the start of the cut and
drops to zero at the end of the cut.

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UP MILLING & DOWN MILLING

UNDEFORMED CHIP THICKNESS

• In the cross section of the chip produced by typical plain milling
operation, the path traced by the cutting edge is actually trochoidal, but
it is approximated as an arc.

• This assumption is reasonably valid since the depth of cut d is usually

much smaller than the cutter diameter D. The chip produced by the
single cutting edge will therefore be confined within the two arcs of
radius equal to D/2.

• The chip length l can be evaluated by taking the chordal length ac in

figure 1. From the triangles obc and abc, we get
 D  2  D  
2
l 2 =   −  − d   + d 2
 2   2  
or
l = dD

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UNDEFORMED CHIP THICKNESS IN PLAIN MILLING

• If t is the mean chip thickness and b is the chip width, then volume of
an individual chip can be evaluated as
VCHIP = lt b = t b dD
• The volume of an undeformed chip can also be obtained by the
following expression v.b.d
VCHIP =
n.N
where v is the table speed and N is the rpm of the cutter having n
number of teeth.
• Equating the above two equations, the mean undeformed chip
thickness can be evaluated as
v d
t=
n.N D
Approximating the chip section acc’a’ by a triangle, the maximum
undeformed chip thickness
tmax = 2t

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• For applying the orthogonal cutting theory, the rake angle is the same
as the radial rake angle when helix angle is zero. The chip thickness
although varies from 0 to tm may be approximated as t

• In symmetrical face milling, as the tool passes over the workpiece, the chip
thickness increases to a maximum value and then decreases. If B is the
width of the workpiece and D is cutter diameter, the chip length l can be
evaluated from figure 2 as
l = arc AB = D.χ
1/ 2
  B 2 
cos χ = 1 −   
  D  
• Expanding both sides of the equation and neglecting the higher order
terms, we get
2 4
χ2 1  B  1 B 
1− + .......... = 1 −   −   − .......
2! 2 D  8 D 

UNDEFORMED CHIP THICKNESS IN FACE MILLING

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1/ 2 1/ 2
B  B     B 2 
2
χ=  
1 +   and l = B 1 +   
D   2 D     2 D  
• If t is the average thickness of the chip and d is the depth of cut, then the
volume of an individual chip can be evaluated as
1/ 2
  B 2 
VCHIP = t .d .B 1 +   
  2 D  
• If where v is the table speed and N is the rpm of the cutter having n
number of teeth, dividing the material removed from workpiece in time τ
by the number of chips produced, we get
v.d .B
VCHIP =
n.N
• Therefore from the above two equations, average undeformed chip
thickness can be evaluated as
2 −1 / 2
v   B  
t= 1 +   
n.N   2 D  

• Expanding the power term and neglecting the higher orders, we can write

v  1 B  
2
t= 1 −   
n.N  2  2 D  

• It is clear that in milling operations, the undeformed chip size or the size of
the cut taken by an individual tooth is of prime importance.

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THANK YOU