Ball-end milling process is used extensively in the machining of sculptured surfaces. In practice, process planner have been face with some troubles.
One of the troubles is to select machining conditions with respect to high material removal rate while avoiding tool breakage and excessive cutter deflection both of which lead to lower productivity. These problems are particulary important for cornering, and slope machining and so on.
In this study, a cutting mechanism of ball-end milling has been analyzed and a cutting force program has been developed to predict instantaneous cutting forces. And, this study deals with cutting mechanism of cornering, and slope machining.
Particulary, this force program is used to analyze the overcut which result from excessive cutting forces in up milling. This program takes into account the effect of tool deflection on the chip thickness, and solves for the tool deflection in which the cutting forces balance with reaction forces.
The correspondence between predicted and measured results was fairly good.
To provide the process planner with a valuable guidance in selecting "acceptable" machining conditions, it will be useful to consider the force system in ball-end milling.
