Chatter suppression in large overhang face milling using a toolholder with high dynamic performance

There is increasing demand for the large overhang toolholder to machine certain workpieces with complex cavities during milling operation, but this kind of toolholder may bring an undesired source of chatter. This paper develops a novel toolholder with high dynamic performance to suppress chatter. Firstly, the dynamics of the milling cutter are investigated according to the cantilever beam theory. The obtained analysis result shows that the increasing stiffness and damping ratio can effectively reduce the vibration amplitude; based on this finding, a novel toolholder is developed through embedding the strips and damping core into the toolholder body. Subsequently, the dynamic characteristic of the novel toolholder is studied qualitatively by the complex number method, and its geometrical parameters are optimized by the finite element method. Finally, modal tests and milling experiments are conducted to verify the chatter stability improvement of the novel toolholder. The experimental results demonstrate that the chatter stability of the developed toolholder is enhanced significantly.