Abstract
Recently, high-speed milling has attracted considerable attention for high processing efficiency and lower cut resistance. However, these milling machines using micro end mills generally have some difficulties in installing a small end mill chuck with less than 10mm diameter to a spindle. Therefore, this paper investigates the possibility of machining method that a milling cutter is directly driven by air turbines to achieve higher rotational speeds. In the proposed machining method, the end mill shank is directly supported by aerostatic bearings. In this paper, the proposed machining method was tested by cutting a bronze material with a small end mill at speed of 400,000 rpm. It was consequently found that the proposed machining method has the possibility to achieve higher milling cut speed.
