Experiment Study of Tool Wear and Surface Integrity in High Speed Milling of a New Damage-tolerant Titanium Alloy

TC4-DT is a new damage-tolerant titanium alloy. In the paper, a series of experiments on tool wear and surface integrity in high speed milling of the alloy were carried out. The tool lives of different tool materials were studied and the wear mechanism of cutting tools was also investigated. Then surface integrity, including surface roughness, microhardness and metallurgical structure was studied and analyzed in high speed milling at different tool wear status. Results showed that K10 is the most suitable cutting tool after considering a combination of factors. And good surface integrity could be obtained in high speed milling of TC4-DT under all cutting situations. In addition, even with acutely worn stages, there has been no so-called serious hardening layer (or white layer) according to the study of microhardness and metallurgical structure beneath the machined surface.