High speed milling is different from traditional milling. This is a more productive and innovative way to manufacture small batches of parts and prototypes. The continuous development of metal industry requires rapid production of parts. Every month, the demand for customized parts or rapid prototype processing is rising. More and more customers want to complete their orders faster. They also want these components to have better accuracy than before.
Aluminum alloy is just one of the most widely used alloys in modern production. It is light, durable, strong and corrosion resistant. Frankly speaking, it is not wrong to conclude that it is the best production material. For this reason, new milling technologies have emerged to unleash their full potential.
High-speed milling is such a modern cnc machining method of aluminum alloy. It is mainly different from traditional milling in speed. High speed milling is usually faster. This allows the feed to increase the cutting feed rate. In addition, compared with traditional milling, it also has other advantages.
Milling process of aluminum alloy parts
The cutting speed of high-speed milling can even be increased to twice when dealing with soft aluminum alloy. In the technical field, the machining feed determines the productivity of the entire milling process. This makes high-speed milling more effective than traditional milling.
The machinability of aluminum alloy enables us to increase the spindle speed. They can even reach 1800 rpm or higher. This material removal rate makes it profitable to process automotive and aerospace parts. First of all, a lot of materials need to be removed from the automobile prototype. We try to achieve this with as few milling settings as possible. In the second case, it involves several long and large parts with deep pockets. In addition, they need to be light. Therefore, we process them into a set of cross ribs. Aluminum alloy accounts for 80% of aircraft and rocket fuselage.
Cut temper
ature aluminum alloy milling parts
The research shows that the cutting temperature changes with the increase of speed. At the beginning, as the speed increases, the temperature also increases. However, further, the temperature dropped sharply. This has reached the point of irrelevance. Increasing the cutting speed will eventually only reduce the temperature to a small extent. This change is very suitable for high-speed milling.
For example, when milling at a speed of 300-500m/min, the temperature may reach 600 to 800 degrees. However, when we increase the speed to 1200, the temperature will decrease by 200 degrees. Then it finally reaches 150 degrees at the speed of 1800m/min. From this point of view, it is meaningless to cut faster later.
From the right angle, it is only 150-200 degrees. The material properties in this area will not change due to local heat treatment. The metal particles do not increase and do not require much cooling. This is a significant advantage.
Extended tool life This may seem strange because of the higher speed involved. Therefore, it is generally believed that tool wear must be higher. However, when we compare it with the amount of material cut by traditional milling, the difference is obvious. A clear winner in terms of high-speed milling tool life.
You may want to know why the tool life is extended? First, the cutting temperature decreases significantly. This translates into higher tool material strength. In addition, the chip width is small during high-speed milling. This is because the tool rotates faster and can cut thinner chips even though the feed rate increases.
In addition, one of the main problems in milling aluminum alloy is that it is very soft. Therefore, it will eventually stick to the cutting edge of the tool during machining. This reduces the sharpness of the tool and increases the cutting force. This will result in a reduction in tool life.
Milling accuracy of aluminum alloy parts
You may assume that a higher feed will result in a lower aluminum surface finish. This is because the cutting edge of the tool moves farther and the tool can turn and cut it off. It usually results in wider chips, increased cutting forces, and worse surface finish. However, although the feed rate of high-speed milling is large, its speed is high. This means that the chip is actually thinner than conventional milling. In addition, because we use smaller cutting forces, the vibration is also lower. These features help improve accuracy.
Coolant usage
There are some high-speed milling technologies that allow us to completely eliminate coolant. Processing at 200 degrees rarely requires the use of coolant. Nevertheless, extremely precise operation requires coolant. This is to improve part quality. Fortunately, the amount of coolant it requires is usually very low because we only need a thin film.