Design and Optimization of Micromilling Cutting Tools

Abstract

With the trend towards miniaturization, micromachining become more and more important in fabricating micro parts. The micromachining process that involved in this study is micro milling. The focus of the study is on the comparison performance between various numbers of flutes (4-flutes, 6-flutes and 8-flutes) with various helix angle (25º,30º and 35º) in micro end milling tool geometry with the conventional micro end milling, 2-flutes micro end milling. Cemented carbide is the material that been used for this study. The main problem about the two flutes micro end milling is it easily wears in a short time. In this study, finite element analysis of the model using cantilever beam principle theory. The tools will be modelled and simulate using Abaqus/CAE 6.10. The tool performance of the designed tool will be evaluated by using the maximum principal stress, σ_max. According to the analysis, weakest geometry is 2-flutes micro end milling and the strongest is 8-flutes micro end milling. 8-flutes micro end milling can be the option to replace the conventional micro end milling.