2008 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 38-44
In recent years, evaluations of electric power consumption as a fundamental property of cutting and other machining systems, based on the energy conversion concept, are beginning to produce many promising results. This study presents a case of successful application to the end milling of a high-hardness material. The test pieces were flat plates, with differences in stiffness due to differences in plate thickness as a noise factor. The process was evaluated in two ways: from the amount of material removed versus number of passes, and from electric power consumed versus number of passes. Except for the signal-to-noise ratio calculated from amount of material removed versus number of passes, the estimated gain closely matched the actual gain, demonstrating reproducibility of the results. Analysis of the relationship between the number of passes M' and the amount of material removed M produced the correct amount of material removed per pass, and identified the conditions for cutting with a high removal rate, which was the goal of the experiment.
