Micro Ball End Milling of Titanium Alloy Using a Tool with a Microstructured Rake Face

Many parts and structures for aerospace engineering, marine engineering, bioengineering, etc. are made of titanium alloy because of its excellent physical, chemical, biological and mechanical properties. These days, bio and medical technologies have developed, so more precise and smaller parts of this alloy are required to be machined. However, end milling of this alloy is not easy though many different types of coated end mills have been developed. In this paper, a micro ball end mill with a microstructured rake face was fabricated using focused iron beam irradiation. Then, the effects of different microstructured rake faces on cutting forces of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V were experimentally investigated for better machining conditions of this alloy. As a result, it was found that some particular types of microstructured rake faces reduced the cutting forces effectively.