Studies on Surface Roughness in Stable and Unstable End-Milling

Surface roughness is an important aspect of a machined piece and greatly influences its performance. This paper presents the surface roughness of end-milled aluminium plates in stable and unstable machining conditions at various spindle speed and depth of cuts machined with cylindrical end-mills. The surface roughness is measured using high-resolution surface replicas with a white light interferometry (WLI) microscope. The measurements of the end-milled floors show that the surface roughness as long as the cutting is performed in stable conditions is insensitive to the depth of cut or spindle speed. In contrast, within chattering conditions, which appear according to stability lobes, surface roughness values increase almost 100%. While at the valleys of the stability lobe diagram, there is a gradual increase in roughness, at the peaks of the stability lobe, the transition from the stable to unstable condition occurs with a sudden increase of the roughness values. In the study of down-milled walls, while the roughness increases with the depth of cut within both the stable and the chattering regions, the transition from the stable to chattering condition can lead to a much larger increase in the surface roughness. These results could be used for strategic selection of operation considering the needs of robustness and possible variation of dynamic parameters that can affect the position of the cutting conditions within the stability lobe diagrams.