Maximizing Chatter Free Material Removal Rate in Milling through Optimal Selection of

Axial and Radial Depth of Cut Pairs

E. Budak (2), A. Tekeli

Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences
Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract
Chatter vibrations in milling, which develop due to dynamic interactions between the cutting tool and the
workpiece, result in reduced productivity and part quality. Several stability models have been considered in
previous publications, where mostly the stability limit in terms of axial depth of cut is emphasized for chatter
free machining. In this paper, it is shown that, for the maximization of chatter free material removal rate, radial
depth of cut is of equal importance. A method is proposed to determine the optimal combination of depths of
cut, so that chatter free material removal rate is maximized. The application of the method is demonstrated on
a pocketing example where significant reduction in the machining time is obtained using the optimal depths.
The procedure can easily be integrated to a CAD/CAM system or a virtual machining environment in order to
identify the optimal milling conditions.

Keywords:
Milling, Chatter, Material Removal Rate

1 INTRODUCTION for the cut. Sridhar et al. [6, 71 performed a comprehensive

Productivity and surface quality in milling processes have
direct effects on cost, production lead time and quality of
machined parts. Chatter is one of the major limitations on
productivity and part quality even for high speed and high
precision milling machines. In this paper, a method of
increasing chatter free material rate by optimal selection of
axial and radial depth of cuts is presented. The application
of the method which is based on the analytical milling
stability model of Budak and Altintas [1,2] is demonstrated
on a pocketing example where significant productivity
improvement is obtained.
Chatter vibrations develop due to dynamic interactions
between the cutting tool and workpiece, and result in poor
surface finish and reduced tool life. Tlusty [3] and Tobias
[4] identified the most powerful source of self-excitation
which is associated with the structural dynamics of the
machine tool and the feedback between the subsequent
cuts on the same cutting surface resulting in regeneration
of waviness on the cutting surfaces, and thus modulation in
the chip thickness. Under certain conditions the amplitude
of vibrations grows and the cutting system becomes
unstable. Although chatter is always associated with
vibrations, in fact it is fundamentally due to instability in the
cutting system. In a particular milling process, for certain
cutting speed and width of cut, there is a limiting axial
depth of cut above which the system becomes unstable,
and chatter develops. Chip thickness, or feedrate, has very
little, if any, affect on the stability limit. Additional
operations, mostly manual, are required to clean the
chatter marks left on the surface. Thus, chatter vibrations
result in reduced productivity, increased cost and
inconsistent product quality.
The stability analysis of milling is complicated due to the
rotating tool, multiple cutting teeth, periodical cutting forces
and chip load directions, and multi-degree-of-freedom
structural dynamics, and has been investigated using
experimental, numerical and analytical methods. In the
early milling stability analysis, Tlusty [5] used his
orthogonal cutting model considering an average direction
analysis of milling dynamics which involved numerical
evaluation of the dynamic milling system's state transition
matrix. Opitz and Bernardi determined the chatter stability
limits in milling using average directional factors [8]. Minis
et al. [9, 101 used Floquet's theorem and the Fourier series
for the formulation of the milling stability, and numerically
solved it using the Nyquist criterion. Budak [ I I ] developed
a stability method which leads to analytical determination
of stability limits. The method was verified by experimental
and numerical results, and was shown to be very fast for
the generation of stability lobe diagrams [1,2]. This method
was also applied to the stability of ball-end milling [12], and
it was extended to three dimensional stability analysis [13].
The special case of low immersion milling has been
investigated in several studies where added lobes were
also presented [14, 151. Recently, Merdol and Altintas [I61
demonstrated that the original multi-frequency stability
model of Budak and Altintas [2] can also be used to predict
the added lobes in the case of very low immersion milling.
In general, the stability limit in terms of axial depth of cut is
predicted for given machining conditions. Although this
ensures that the maximum chatter-free axial depth of cut is
used, it does not guarantee maximum chatter free material
removal rate. For certain combinations of axial and radial
depth of cuts, the material removal rate is maximized
which is investigated in this paper. A method for the
determination of the optimal radial and axial depth of cut
pair is presented and its application to pocketing is
demonstrated by an example. This method can be used for
optimization of milling conditions yielding the maximum
possible chatter free material removal rate for a given
milling system.
2 CHATTER STABILITY LIMITS IN MILLING
2.1 Stable axial and radial depth of cut limits
The analytical stability model of Budak and Altintas [ I , 2,
111 is used in the rest of the analysis. In this model, after
an expression for the dynamic chip thickness under the
effect of vibrations is derived, it is used to formulate the
dynamic milling forces. The Fourier series expansions for
the periodically varying directional coefficients and the
Floquet's theorems are used to obtain the stability limit [ I ,
2, 111. Using zero order approximation, i.e. retaining only
the first term in the Fourier series expansion, the axial
stability limit is obtained as follows:
diagrams generated using the analytical method. One
importance of identifying bl,, is clearly seen in Figure 2.
The radial depth of cut limit for the selected axial depth
reaches to the maximum value of b = l at some speeds.
That is another reason why the maximum material removal
rate can only be achieved by optimizing a and b
simultaneously.

where N is the number of teeth, Kf is the tangential milling

force coefficient, ill is the imaginary part of the eigenvalue
and k-=ilR/ill. The eigenvalue of the milling system is
determined from the oriented transfer function matrix
determined using the frequency response functions in two
orthogonal directions and average directional factors [ I , 21.
The directional factors depend on the radial depth of cut
which affects the resulting stable axial depth. Stability
diagrams in terms of axial depth of cut for a given radial
depth of cut can be generated using equation (1) in a
certain spindle speed range by varying the chatter
frequency in order to determine the numerical values of the
transfer functions.
I
The radial depth of cut, B, is defined as follows: 05 1 15 2 25
Spindle Speed (rpm) x 10m

B E =~-cos(&) (u p-mil ling) (2)

B E = 1 +COS( $sf) (down-milling) (3) Figure 1. Stable axial depth of cut vs. spindle speed for
where bStand beXare the start and exit angles of the cutting b=0.67.
edges to and from the cut, and R is the tool radius. A
normalized form of the radial depth of cut, b=B/2R is used
in the formulation for simplicity and generalization. Thus, b
is unitless, and it may only have values in the range of [0,
I ] . The stability diagrams can be generated, in terms of
either alrm vs. spindle speed (for a fixed bl,,) or bl,, vs.
spindle speed (for a fixed alrm).The common practice is to
express stability diagrams in terms of alrm vs. spindle
speed. The importance of identifying bl,, is two folds. First,
in some roughing cases, axial depth is fixed, so the
maximum stable b should be used to reach maximum
productivity. Second, maximum MRR can only be achieved
by optimizing both depth of cuts as it depends on both of
them:

MRR = a.B.n.N.f, (4)

"'I
01

01 I
05 1 15 2 25
where, a is the axial depth of cut, B is the radial depth of Spindle Speed (rpm) ~ 1 0 ~
cut, n is the spindle speed, N is the number of cutting
teeth, and f f is the feed per revolution per tooth. Figure 2. Stable radial depth of cut vs. spindle speed for
A simple iterative algorithm to generate stability diagrams a=l.5 mm
in terms of bl,, vs. spindle speed is presented next. The
procedure starts with selection of an alrm for which the
stability diagram, bl,, vs. spindle speed, will be generated.
Then, by scanning the full range (0 to 180') of exit angles
(in the case of up-milling) or start angles (in the case of 08
down-milling) the eigenvalues of the milling system are
determined. As the last step, beX or bsf for which the alrm,
calculated using equation (I), equals the selected value of
alrmis determined. Finally, the corresponding value of bl,, is
determined using equation (2) or (3).
2.2 Stable depth of cut pairs
As explained in the previous section, either of the chatter
free axial or radial depth of cuts can be determined using
the stability model. However, the maximum chatter free
removal rate may only be attained for a certain 011

combination of radial and axial depths of cut. Throughout 01

the analysis, simulations for different cases were carried 5
Axial Depth of Cut (mm)
10

out. One of those was the system considered by Weck et

al. in [I71 which involves milling of an aluminium alloy with Figure 3. Stable radial depth of cut vs. stable axial depth
a 3-tooth end mill. Figures 1 and 2 show the stability of cut for 12600 rpm.
If we focus on a specific spindle speed where stability limits
are the highest, i.e. in the lobes, we see that, no decrease
in b is necessary for some increase in a . However, after a
certain point, a negatively sloped relation exists between
the stable limits of axial and radial depths of cut as
represented in Figure 3.
3 MAXIMIZATION OF CHATTER FREE MATERIAL
REMOVAL RATE
Since material removal rate (MRR) is proportional to the
multiplication of the axial and radial depths of cut, it is
interesting to find out at which combination of axial and
radial depths of cut, the maximum value of MRR may be
achieved. In general, the effect of ft on stability is small and
can be neglected. Therefore, a normalized value of MRR is
used hereafter:
MRR* for an axial depth of cut is calculated using the bl,
corresponding to that uBm. Subsequently the chatter free
MRR* is obtained as shown below:
MRR* = allm.bllm.n.N
For the example considered in Section 2, the variation of
the MRR* with the axial depth of cut at the high stability
pocket position of 12600 rpm is shown in Figure 4. The
figure indicates that, for this case the maximum possible
MRR* can be obtained for the axial depth of cut of about 5
4 APPLICATION: OPTIMAL PAIR OF DEPTHS OF CUT
FOR THE MINIMUM POCKETING TIME
Pocketing is a very common operation in milling, e.g. in
die, mold, and airframe production etc. Pocketing time
simply depends on the material removal rate and the
dimensions of the pocket. Both should be considered
simultaneously to calculate the minimum pocketing time.
As explained in the previous sections, if the dynamics of
the machine tool is known, the optimal depths of cut for the
maximum MRR* can be easily determined. However, those
obtained values for the maximum MRR* may not result in
the minimum pocketing time. In order to find the minimum
pocketing time, one should consider the total number of
passes (nop).The term "pass" stands for one cutting pass
across the pocket length. Total pocketing time (TPT) can
be approximately expressed as:
wP
TPT = nop.- (7)
f
where wp and f are the pocket width and the feed rate,
respectively. Thus, minimizing total pocketing time is
equivalent to minimizing number of passes since we keep
the feed rate constant throughout the analysis. A proper
feed rate value should be used considering the other
(6) constraints such as the tool capacity and the surface finish
requirement. Number of passes can then be expressed as:
(21
nop = ceil - .ceil 2

where dp is the pocket depth, lP is the pocket length, ceil is

mm. As a result of simulations and analyses of different
cases, it is found that different situations regarding
maximum MRR* may occur. In some cases the MRR*
curve has a peak as in Figure 4. In some cases, on the
other hand, it increases with the axial depth reaching a
maximum value which does not change by further
increasing the axial depth. Although an analytical
prediction of these conditions was not possible to obtain,
during the simulation of different cases it was realized that
the difference stemmed from conditions regarding the
machine tool dynamics. More specifically, everything else
being constant, if the natural frequencies of the cutter and
workpiece system are different in x and y directions
significantly, and the feed is in the direction of lower natural
frequency, then it is more likely to see a peak in the MRR*
curve [18]. For the example considered here, the modal
frequencies of the end mill in the feed and normal
directions were 600 Hz and 660 Hz, respectively [17].
18
Y 10'
I 12.00
the round up function. The ceil function is used, because
even if the remaining part for the final pass is smaller than
the geometry determined by axial and radial depths of cut,
the time necessary for that final pass does not change. It is
because of the ceil functions that maximizing MRR* is not
necessarily the same as minimizing nop.
The steps of the proposed method are shown in Figure 5.
Once the pocket geometry and the appropriate tool are
identified, workpiece and cutter dynamics are to be
measured, so that the pairs of stable axial and radial depth
of cut limits can be determined using simulations. For the
example considered in Section 2, the pairs of stable depths
are determined using the method presented here and
shown in Table 1. It is then straightforward to find the
minimum nop numerically using equation (8). Results of
the optimization are presented in Table 2.
a/im (mm) b/im
4.00 1.oo
6.00 0.83
8.00 0.65
10.00 0.52
0.44
14.00 0.38
20.00 0.27

Table 1. Pairs of stable limits of axial and radial depths of

~ Spindle Speed =- 12600 RPM
cut.
The first two column of Table 2 show the required pocket
depth and length. The next two column-sets present the
resulting number of passes (nop)for two different methods.
The first method stands for choosing a high radial depth of
cut close to full slotting, b=0.8 in this case. The second
column set, Optimal, presents the results for choosing the
optimal pair of depths of cut according to the method
presented in this paper. The last column shows the
I
.
percentage improvements in pocketing time attained by the
optimal combination.

w
w
w, wny kx ky rx r y

optimal allm& bl,m

to minimize:

Pocket I b=0.8 I
Determine pocket geometry

Select tool geometry

Measure machine tool

dynamics

Obtain the pairs of stable pairs

of depth of cut by simulation

Find the optimal pair of

depths of cut that minimizes
the pocketing time.

Figure 5. Overview of the proposed method.

Optimal
20 10 5-5- 52 20 0.27 38
5-5
Table 2. Optimal depths of cut for the minimum pocketing
time.
Similar or even higher improvements in nop were obtained
for other selected values of b. In conclusion, the optimal
combination of axial and radial depths of cut, which gives
the minimum pocketing time, might be quite different than
those determined in by the conventional ways, i.e.
arbitrarily picking a radial depth of cut. It is shown that by
using the optimal combination, significant saving, up to
around 40 % reduction in pocketing time can be achieved.
5 CONCLUSIONS
A method is presented for increasing the chatter free
material removal rate in milling. The method is based on
the identification of the optimal pairs of axial and radial
depth of cuts. It is shown that for certain combinations of
axial and radial depths the chatter free material removal
rate is maximized resulting in reduced machining time. The
application of the method is demonstrated with a pocketing
example where up to about 40% reduction in the pocketing
time is obtained. The method can be used in optimization
of the milling conditions for increased chatter free material
removal rate in a variety of other applications.
I Imp. I
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