Evaluating the Effect of PCD End Mill’s Nose Radius on Machinability of Titanium Alloy Ti-6Al-4V in High Speed Milling

Tool nose radius is an important geometrical parameter in the design of the tool. Due to its direct contact with the workpiece surface it have significant effect not only on the resulting surface quality but also on the tool life. Use of an end mill without nose radius can easily blend during machining due to a lot of stresses acting on the edge of the tool while the large nose radius end mill can increase the strength and rigidity of the tool but can also contribute in increasing the friction between the tool and the workpiece. Therefore careful selection of tool nose radius is important and especially important for Polycrystalline Diamond, PCD insert as this tool material has recently shown great success in terms of tool life, surface roughness and productivity over coated and uncoated carbide tools in high speed end milling of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V and with the use of correct tool geometry it can be further helpful in increasing tool life and surface quality. This study therefore investigates the effect of various nose radii’s (R0.1,0.2,0.4,0.8,1.2,1.6,2.4,3.2) and complete round insert end mill on cutting forces and heat distribution between tool and the chip for PCD insert and compare the results with multi-layer (Al2O3+TiAlN+TiN) coated carbide tool at high speed cutting conditions using 3-D finite element numerical simulations. Results have shown that both tools due to their difference in thermal and mechanical properties have different behavior under the conditions studied especially when the complete round insert tool is used. The use of small nose radius tool when nose radius rn is less than the axial depth of cut ap, the forces and the temperature remains quite low and slightly increases with the increase of radius until rn is smaller than ap but when rn gets larger than ap and only some portion of nose radius is involved in cutting, then forces and temperature increases considerably. While when complete round insert end mill is used the forces and temperature significantly drops (more than 50% than the largest nose radius tool studied) at the same ap for PCD insert but for multi-layer coated carbide tool it drops only slightly (20% than the largest nose radius tool studied). The reason for this difference lies in the fact that PCD tool has lower toughness, high hot strength and is more brittle than carbide tools and therefore maximum advantage can be taken only when small nose radius is used or when complete round insert tool is used as complete round insert have uniform stress distribution and also provides more stability for PCD tool material while large nose radius tool increases friction and also has more heat penetration in the tool thus resulting in higher cutting forces and temperature thus ultimately contributing in high wear of tool. While on the other hand carbide tools are only beneficial when smaller nose radius tool is used rather than round shape because of lower hot strength of the material.