Investigation on Micro-milling of Ti-6Al-4V Alloy by PCD Slotting-Tools

Ti-6Al-4V is characterized by various protruding characteristics and has been found extensive applications in aerospace, biomedical device industries and other fields. However, these properties in turn bring about the increase in cutting forces, make the chips intractable to control and also shorten the tool service life, etc. A preliminary exploration of micro-milling of Ti-6Al-4V by PCD slotting-tool (MST-PCD) was launched in this paper. The most prominent advantage was the PCD slotting-tools could reach a higher linear velocity even the spindle speed was lower, which can strongly ensure the strength and stiffness of micro cutters and suppress the vibration occurrence due to the high spindle speed. The machining processes of using PCD slotting-tool and carbide micro-end mill (MEM-WC) was compared in detail. The wear experiments were conducted to confirm the effectiveness and advantage of MST-PCD. The cutting forces and surface quality, as well as the effects of tool wear on these output responses were investigated. Then model establishment and multi-objective parameter optimization were performed based on the orthogonal experiment results. Finally, verification experiments were also carried out to confirm the effectiveness of the developed models and MST-PCD. The findings in this paper can also be applied to other difficult-to-machine materials.