Evaluation of different milling strategies on the performance of aluminium thin-walled parts

Achieving a good quality and performance accuracy during milling thin-walled parts is a challenging task associated with several industries. Therefore, the careful selection of the milling strategy is of utmost importance to obtain the best process performance. Accordingly, this paper studies various milling strategies’ influence on the production effectiveness of thin-walled elements made of aluminium 5083 alloy. Machining time, surface roughness, and thin-wall deformation are the output measured responses to evaluate the process’s effectiveness. Four milling strategies: parallel spiral, zigzag, parallel spiral with clean corner, and overlap spiral, selected using MasterCAM software, are implemented at fixed cutting conditions. The results showed that the parallel spiral is the best milling strategy for minimum surface roughness, wall deflection error, and thickness error with values of 0.1982 mm, 0.186°, and 0.23 mm, respectively, compared to other milling strategies. However, the overlap spiral strategy produces the worst thin-wall surface and higher wall deformation. Copyright © 2024 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.