An investigation into material-induced surface roughness in ultra-precision milling

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental investigation into the effect of the workpiece material on surface roughness in the ultra-precision milling process. The influences of material swelling and tool-tip vibration on surface generation in ultra-precision raster milling are studied. A new method is proposed to characterize material-induced surface roughness on the raster-milled surface. A new parameter is defined to characterize the extent of surface roughness profile distortion induced by the materials being cut. An experiment is conducted to compare the proposed method with surface roughness parameters and power spectrum density analysis method by machining three different workpiece materials. The results show that the presence of elastic recovery improves the surface finish in ultra-precision raster milling and that, among the three materials being cut in the experiment, aluminum bronze has the greatest influence on surface finish due to its highest elastic recovery rate and hardness. The results also show that, in the case of faster feed rates, the proposed method more efficiently characterizes material-induced surface roughness.