An Overview of High-speed Machining of Titanium Alloys (original) (raw)

Proceedings of International Conference on Leading Edge Manufacturing in 21st century : LEM21

Titanium alloys have been widely used in the aerospace, biomedical and automotive industries because of their good strength-to-weight ratio and superior corrosion resistance. However, it is very diencult to machine them due to their poor machinability, which has led many large cempanies to invest much in developing techniques to minimize machining cost. During machining oftitanium alloys, their poor therrnal conductivity results in the higher temperature closer to the cutting edge, and there exists strong affTmity between the tool and worlrpiece material. When machining titanium alloys with the conventional tools, the wear rate progresses rapidly, and the cutting speed is generally diencult to be over 60mlmin. Other types of tool materials, including cerarnic, diamond, and cubic boron ninide (CBN), are highly reactive with titanium alloys at higher temperature, and consequently they are not effective to be used in HSM of titanium alloys. The binder-less CBN (BCBN) tools, which neither have any binder nor a sintering agent or a catalyst, have a remarlcal)ly longer tool life than conventional CBN inserts under all cutting conditions (up to 400mfmin). The BCBN appears to become a new cutring tool material for HSM oftitanium alloys both economically and functionally. In order to get deeper understanding ofHSM oftitanium alloys, the generation of mathematical models is essential, Therefore, analytical models are needed to be established to predict the machining pararneters for HSM of titanium alloys. This paper aims to give an overview of recent developments in machining and HSM oftitanium alloys, geometrical modeling ofHSM and cutting force models for HSM of titanium alloys.