MS Thesis Presentation by Glynn Newby
Wednesday, May 18, 2005

(Dr. S. Liang, Chair)

"Empirical Analysis of Cutting Constants in Micro End Milling Operations"

Abstract

The development of miniaturized technologies has become a global phenomenon that continues to make an impact across a broad range of applications that encompasses many diverse fields and industries including telecommunications, portable consumer electronics, defense, and biomedical. Subsequently this trend has caused more and more interest in the issues involved in the design, development, operation and analysis of equipment and processes for manufacturing micro components.

One technology used to create these miniaturized components is micro end milling. The cutting forces of the micro end milling process provide vital information for the design, modeling, and control of the machining process. To gain an understanding of forces in micro end milling operations, a model of average chip thickness is derived and the differences between conventional end milling and micro end milling are enumerated. From the experimental results, empirical models for specific cutting constants were derived and compared the generally accepted forms for conventional end milling operations. These models provide a tool for the estimation of cutting forces in micro end milling.