Stability of low radial immersion milling

Traditional regenerative stability theory predicts a set of spindle speeds with locally optimum stability at integer fractions of the natural frequency of the most flexible mode of the system. The assumptions of this theory become invalid for highly interrupted machining, where the ratio of time spent cutting to not cutting (denoted ρ) is small. This paper proposes a new stability theory for interrupted machining that predicts a doubling in the number of optimally stable speeds as the value of ρ becomes small. The predictions are verified against experiment and numerical simulation.