A study of surface roughness variation in ultrasonic vibration-assisted milling

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of assisted ultrasonic vibration on the surface roughness of machined surfaces in micro-end-milling. Series of slot-milling experiments were conducted with aluminum alloy as workpiece material. The surface roughness of slot bottom surface and vertical side wall surface of slot was studied, respectively. It is found that surface roughness of the machined slot bottom surface could increase to varying degrees because of ultrasonic vibration in most of the studied cases, and this deterioration becomes more apparent when large feed per tooth and low-spindle speed were adopted. As for the vertical side wall surface of the slot, there is an obvious improvement of surface roughness when ultrasonic vibration is applied. Based on analysis of variance analysis, further study indicates that the surface roughness of vertical side wall surface of the slot is determined by several key parameters including spindle speed, feed per tooth and amplitude in ultrasonic vibration-assisted milling. An optimal combination of these parameters is of great benefit to achieving small surface roughness.