Burrs understanding, modeling and optimization during slot milling of aluminium alloys

Nowadays due to global competition, manufacturing industries must provide high quality products on time and within the cost constraints to remain competitive. High quality mechanical parts include those with better surface finish and texture, dimension and form accuracies, reduced tensile residual stress and burr-free. The burr formation is one of the most common and undesirable phenomenon occurring in machining operations, which reduces assembly and machined part quality. Therefore, it is desired to eliminate the burrs or reduce the effort required to remove them. Amongst machining operations, slot milling has a more complex burr formation mechanism with multiple burrs appear in machined part edges with non-uniform dimensions. The ultimate goal of this research work is burr minimization in slot milling operation. To this end, new strategies for understanding, modeling and optimizing burrs during slot milling of aluminum alloys are proposed for improving the part quality and ultimately reducing the non-value added expenses caused by deburring processes. In order to have a better understanding of slot milling burr formation mechanism, multi-level experimental studies and statistical methods are used to determine the effects of machining conditions, tooling and workpiece materials on burrs size (height and thickness) when using dry high speed condition. It was found that optimum setting levels of process parameters to minimize each burr are dissimilar. The analysis of results shows that cutting tool, feed per tooth and depth of cut have certain level of influence on slot milling burrs. However most of the burrs are strongly affected by interaction effects between process parameters that consequently complicate developing burr size prediction models. An analytical model is proposed to predict the thickness of the largest burr during slot milling of ductile materials. The model is based on the geometry of burr formation and continuity of work at the transition from chip formation to burr formation, which also takes into account the effect of the cutting force involved in the machining process. A computational model is also developed to predict the exit up milling side burr thickness based on the use of cutting parameters and material properties such as yield strength and specific cutting force coefficient, which are the only unknown variables in the model. Both analytical and computational models are validated using experimental results obtained during slot milling of 2024-T351 and 6061-T6 aluminium alloys. Machining parameters optimization to minimize the burr size could have a negative impact on other machining performance characteristic, such as surface finish, tool life and material removal rate. Therefore, surface finish is also investigated with burr formation in this research work. For simultaneous multiple responses optimization, a new modification to the application of Taguchi method is suggested by proposing fitness mapping function and desirability index. The proposed modification is validated by simultaneous minimization of surface roughness and thickness of five burrs during slot milling of 6061-T6 aluminium alloy. The optimization results demonstrate the potential and capability of the proposed approach