Investigation on the milling performance of titanium alloy thin-walled part with air jet assistance

Cutter back-off and vibration are easily generated when machining of titanium alloy thin-walled parts due to its low rigidity, which has become the bottleneck for processing titanium alloy thin-walled parts. In order to investigate whether the impact force of air jet can reduce the part deformation and the vibration during machining process or not, experiments of milling Ti6Al4V alloy thin-walled part with and without air jet assistance were conducted. Vibration acceleration signals and cutting force signals in the milling process under the same cutting parameters are analyzed and compared. Also, vibration acceleration signals in frequency domain obtained by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) are analyzed and compared. Furthermore, the impact force produced by air jet acting on the thin-walled part was collected separately before milling experiments and calculated according to the theory of hydromechanics to investigate its supporting effect. Finally, the experiment results show that air jet assistance can improve cutting stability and reduce cutting force, leading to better surface quality and reduced part deformation.