A comparative study on the use of drilling and milling processes in hole making of GFRP composite

Drilling and milling processes are extensively used for producing riveted and bolted joints during the assembly operations of composite laminates with other components. Hole making in glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) composites is the most common mechanical process, which is used to join them to other metallic structures. Bolt joining effectiveness depends, critically, on the quality of the holes. The quality of machined holes in GFRP is strongly dependent on the appropriate choice of the cutting parameters. The main purpose of the present study is to assess the influence of drilling and milling machining parameters on hole making process of woven laminated GFRP material. A statistical approach is used to understand the effects of the control parameters on the response variables. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to isolate the effects of the parameters affecting the hole making in the two types of cutting processes. The results showed that milling process is more suitable than drilling process at high level of cutting speed and low level of feed rate, when the cutting quality (minimum surface roughness, minimum difference between upper and lower diameter) is of critical importance in the manufacturing industry, especially for precision assembly operation.