Prediction of cutting forces in helical milling process

The prediction of cutting forces is important for the planning and optimization of machining process in order to reduce machining damage. Helical milling is a kind of hole-machining technique with a milling tool feeding on a helical path into the workpiece, and thus, both the periphery cutting edges and the bottom cutting edges all participated in the machining process. In order to investigate the characteristics of discontinuous milling resulting in the time varying undeformed chip thickness and cutting forces direction, this paper establishes a novel analytic cutting force model of the helical milling based on the helical milling principle. Dynamic cutting forces are measured and analyzed under different cutting parameters for the titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V). Cutting force coefficients are identified and discussed based on the experimental test. Analytical model prediction is compared with experiment testing. It is noted that the analytical results are in good agreement with the experimental data; thus, the established cutting force model can be utilized as an effective tool to predict the change of cutting forces in helical milling process under different cutting conditions.