Abstract
To develop milling tools for high-rate machining of steels, prototype cutters with a special double-rake edge design using the SWC (Silver White Chip) cutting principle have been evaluated in milling tests of the low carbon steel SS 41 generally used for weldments and the SCM 440 chromium-molybdenum steel. Three kinds of indexabletype prototype cutters with ISO M 2 grade inserts have been tested: they are, so-called “type-U” facemilling cutter intended for rough machining of the low carbon steel, “type-S” face-milling cutter for medium carbon steels and alloy steels, and “typeSL” cutter for slot milling operation. Test results show that when proper cutting conditions are selected so as to form the built-up edge on the primary rake face, the cutting edge is free from the fragile chipping, and therefore the high-rate milling is possible. A double-rake edge of the prototype cutters is operated normally and attain tool life from 2 000 to 10 000 cuts per edge at the metal removal rate several times greater than that of a conventional cutter edge. Machining power required by the SWC cutters is reduced by 20 to 38% to that by the conventional cutter. It will be possible to design cutters for practical use based on those test results.
