Study of elementary micro-cutting in hardened tool steel
Résumé
This paper deals with micromachining and in particular with the study of micro-cutting in the context of metals micro-milling. Micro-milling is basically characterized by tools with a diameter less than 1 mm and that can reach 0. 05 mm. These tools have no longer complex and sharp geometries as conventional tools because of manufacturing difficulties. With such small tools, cutting parameters are also very different from conventional
machining, and manufacturers usually advise "adapted" cutting conditions such as feed per tooth smaller than 10 μm. However, an approach based on scale reduction (top-down) leads in micromilling to the emergence of critical size effects. These size effects are the main issues in understanding the mechanisms of microcutting. Most of the published studies focus on experiments and force models directly applied to the case of micro-milling, and, at this scale, it is very complicated to identify and separate dynamical, geometrical and cutting problems from cutting forces and surfaces observation A solution to clarify the analyses and to propose a proper modelling approach is to consider a simpler case, namely
the elementary micro-cutting where the assumption of a rigid and straight tool is more suitable.