Developing A Surface Roughness Model for End-Milling of Micro-Channel

Micro-milling operations are one of the common manufacturing processes that are used primarily to produce miniaturized components within the range of less than a millimeter. The surface roughness of the channel plays an important role in the motion of fluid in the channel. Since most traditional finishing operations cannot be performed easily on micro-channels, the study of relationship between micro-milling parameters and surface roughness is of extreme importance. In this work, the geometrical features of cutting edge, along with the concept of minimum chip thickness, are taken into consideration for constructing the micro-channel surface texture using kinematic rules and transformation operators. ACIS, a 3D B-rep geometric kernel, is used as a geometric engine for simulation of surface texture produced in the micro-milling process. In addition, the relationship between cutting conditions and surface roughness is investigated using DOE method and a regression model. All micro-channel experiments were performed on stainless steel 316. Finally, simulation and regression results are compared with measured surface roughness and the validity of these two models is approved. Depending on the available data, one of these two approaches can be used to predict the surface roughness of the channel's floor.