A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF MACHINING CHARACTERISTICS OF LENS TITANIUM ALLOY (TI-6AL-4V)

Titanium alloys are popular and used in a wide range of design applications in aerospace and biomedical industry due to their advantageous material properties. Titanium is categorised into various grades such as Cp Titanium, Titanium5553 and Titanium64. Grade 5 titanium (Ti6Al-4V) is used in this paper. This paper is a preliminary study of machining characteristics of Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS) Titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) using face milling. With the advancement in Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, components can be easily and efficiently made into various parts with complex geometries that is not possible using traditional manufacturing methods. All materials processed using AM face the same critical problem that the manufactured part requires a post machining since AM produces relatively poor surface finish. This report presents a study of the machining characteristics of a LENS titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) and its behaviour under a milling operation with a set combinations of machining parameters such as cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut and wet/dry machining. This report also analysed the surface finish of each sample and its correlation to its wrought counterparts. LENS titanium complied with the notion of increasing cutting speed will result in lower cutting force. The cutting force in dry milling is lower than the force in wet milling. The tool wear in dry milling is higher than the wet milling.