Prediction of regenerative chatter by modelling and analysis of high-speed milling

High-speed milling is widely used in the manufacturing industry. For the efficiency of the milling process, high demands on the material removal rate and the surface generation rate are posed. The process parameters, determining these two rates, are restricted by the occurrence of regenerative chatter. Chatter is an undesired instability phenomenon, which causes both a reduced product quality and rapid tool wear. In this paper, the milling process is modelled, based on dedicated experiments on both the material behaviour of the workpiece material and the machine dynamics. These experiments show that both the material properties and the machine dynamics are dependent on the spindle speed. Furthermore, a method for the prediction of the chatter boundaries is proposed and applied in order to predict the chatter boundaries as a function of process parameters, such as spindle speed and depth-of-cut, for spindle speed varying material and machine parameters. Finally, experiments are performed to estimate these chatter boundaries in practice. The modelled chatter boundaries are compared to the experimental results in order to validate the model and the stability analysis. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.