Analysis of Surface Characteristics of Titanium Alloy Milling with Ball-End Milling Cutters Based on Mesoscopic Geometric Features

Abstract

In order to further reduce the height of burrs on the surface of the workpiece when milling titanium alloy with ball-end milling cutters and optimize the quality of the workpiece, this article takes the mesoscopic geometric feature of ball-end milling cutters as the research object and establishes the theoretical relationship between the mesoscopic geometric feature parameters and the height of titanium alloy burrs during milling. A milling test platform was built to explore the influence of micro-texture, blunt edge single factor, and their interaction with cutting parameters on the force-thermal characteristics and workpiece burr in the milling process. The influence mechanism was revealed, and the prediction model was established. The results show that the ball-end milling cutter with mesoscopic geometric features was able to suppress burrs, and the burr height was reduced by 21% compared with the non-textured milling cutter. The micro-texture reduced the contact area and improved the heat dissipation conditions, thereby reducing the force-thermal characteristics and thus inhibiting the formation of some burrs. The blunt edge can disperse the stress, diffuse the local heat in the tool–chip contact area, and reduce the burr height. In the interaction test considering cutting parameters, the interaction between R and ap was significant. The optimized parameters based on the simulated annealing algorithm were as follows: the radius of the blunt edge was 33.242 μm, the distance between the texture and the edge was 114.621 μm, the texture diameter was 59.820 μm, the texture spacing L1 was 131.410 μm, the cutting depth ap was 0.310 mm, the cutting speed V was 140.019 mm/min, and the feed f was 60 μm/z. This provides a basis for the study of strengthening the tool to suppress burr size.