Generation of Tool-Life-Prolonging and Chatter-Free Efficient Toolpath for Five-Axis Milling of Freeform Surfaces

Short tool service life is always a major concern when milling hard materials, such as Ni-based superalloy. In the current research of tool life optimization in multi-axis machining of freeform surfaces, the focus is mostly on choosing suitable cutting parameters and better application of coolant. In this paper, aiming at averaging the tool wear on the entire cutting edge and hence prolonging the tool service life, we report a study on how to generate a multilayer toolpath with a varying tool lead angle for multi-axis milling of an arbitrary freeform surface from an initial raw stock. The generated toolpath is guaranteed to be free of chatter, which is well known for its detrimental effect on the cutting edge. In this study, we first experimentally construct the chatter stability lobe diagram, which reveals the relationship between the lead angle and the cutting depth. With the chatter stability lobe diagram as the major constraint, we then generate the machining toolpath by selecting a proper pair of the best lead angle and cutting depth along the toolpath. While the proposed algorithm currently is restricted to the iso-planar type of toolpath, it can be adapted to other types of milling. The physical cutting experiments performed by us have convincingly confirmed the advantage of the proposed machining strategy as compared to the conventional constant lead angle and constant cutting depth strategy—in our tests the maximum wear on the cutting edge is reduced by as much as 39%.