Improvement of the surface texture quality of milled dies and molds

One of the goals of multi-axis milling for dies and molds is to achieve good accuracy together with an improvement in surface finish, in order to minimize polishing operations, still necessary to obtain the surface finish required by the automotive industry and the plastic injection sector. This present study concerns the multi-axis milling of a specific mold steel by a ball nose carbide tool coated with Ti(CN). Surface finish analysis given by 3D measurements and data processing techniques shows that micro-geometrical defaults generated by a C-1 continuous tool path are definitely less important than those obtained by classical tool paths driven via linear interpolation.