The Effect of Speed-Varying Micro-Cutting Tool Dynamics on Stability During High-Speed Micromilling of Ti6Al4V

Chatter-free machining is necessary in micromilling to avoid the catastrophic failure of micro-end mill. The accuracy of the prediction of chatter-free machining conditions in high-speed micromilling has been improved in this work by including speed-varying micro-end mill dynamics. An optimum design of exponential window has been devised to remove the unwanted spindle dynamics from the displacement signal to construct the speed-dependent frequency response function (FRF) of micro-end mill. The stiffness of the micro-end mill has been found to be increasing with increase in spindle speed and the natural frequency of the micro-end mill has been found to be changing with change in spindle speeds. The cutting velocity-chip load-dependent cutting coefficients have been included to predict the stability using Nyquist criterion. The predicted stability lobe with speed-varying micro-end mill dynamics has increased chatter-free depth of cut significantly compared to the chatter-free depth of cut predicted with static micro-end mill dynamics. The increase in depth of cut with speed-varying dynamics has been found to be 28% at 20,000 rpm, 150% at 52,000 rpm, and 250% at 70,000 rpm. A critical value of acceleration of the workpiece has been identified for chatter onset detection and it has been validated with machined surface image analysis. The magnitude of acceleration in both feed and normal to feed direction has been characterized to analyze the effect of spindle speed and depth of cut on the vibration of workpiece.