The influence of cutting force on surface machining quality

Appropriately controlled cutting forces can contribute not only to the safety and efficiency of machining but also to the quality of machined surfaces. It is even more important when hardened material is cut. The correlation between the cutting force and the surface quality in ball-end milling operations has been investigated by machining P20 steel (HRC 30) work-pieces using solid carbide ball-end cutters. Plane surfaces with different depth of cut were machined using two different cutting strategies. The first strategy cut the test-piece using a cutting force model, whereas the other machined with a feed rate optimization product, which uses the removal rate as an analogue of cutting force to control the feed rate. The test results show that constant surface quality is possible when the cutting forces are controlled through feed rate adjustment. Conversely, a desired surface quality can also be maintained by controlling the cutting force in a predetermined manner.