An experimental study on milling of high-volume fraction SiCP/Al composites with PCD tools of different grain size

High-volume fraction SiCP/Al composites have attracted considerable interest as potential materials for electronic packaging. However, due to the existence of hard and brittle SiC particles, high-volume fraction SiCP/Al composite is a kind of difficult-to-machine materials. This paper presents an experimental study on milling high-volume fraction SiCP/Al composites with polycrystalline diamond tools of different grain sizes. A series of milling tests, under three sets of cutting parameters, were conducted on a Mikron UCP 710 high-speed milling machine center. Three polycrystalline diamond (PCD) tools with different grain sizes were used to mill straight grooves. The machined surface quality of the grooves, including surface topography and surface roughness, and tool wear characteristics were analyzed. The results showed that surface roughness increased with feed per tooth (f (z)) increasing from 5 to 10 mu m/z. Chipping and abrasive wear can be observed in cutting tool and chipping is the dominant tool wear mechanism. Tool with grain size of 2 similar to 30 mu m can achieve the best machined surface quality (Ra 0.3) under cutting parameters of f (z) = 5 mu m/z, a (p) = 100 mu m, and n = 10,000 rpm. But, it has the most severe tool wear in tool tip.