Modelling of high-speed milling for prediction of regenerative chatter

High-speed milling is widely used to manufacture products. Examples of application areas are the aerospace industry and mould industry. Cost-related considerations place high demands on the material removal rate and surface generation rate. However, in this respect restrictions on the process parameters, determining these two rates, are imposed by the occurrence of regenerative chatter. Chatter is an undesired instability phenomenon, which causes both reduced product surface quality and tool wear. In this paper, the milling process is modelled, based on dedicated experiments on both the material behaviour of the workpiece material and the machine dynamics. Moreover, an efficient method for determining the chatter boundaries in the model is proposed and applied to the model in order to predict chatter boundaries in the process parameters, such as the spindle speed and depth of cut, which both influence the material removal rate and surface generation rate. Finally, experiments are performed to estimate these chatter boundaries in practice.Comparison of the modelled chatter boundaries with these experimental results confirm the validity of the model and the effectiveness of the stability analysis proposed