Machining quality of high speed helical milling of carbon fiber reinforced plastics

Among advanced cutting methods, High Speed Milling (HSM) is often recommended to improve the productivity and to reduce the costs of machining parts. As every cutting process, HSM is characterized by some defects like surface roughness and delamination are the main defects generated in composite materials. The aim of this experimental work is the studying of the machining quality of woven Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) using the HSM technology. Experiments were done using different machining parameters combinations to make opened holes in CFRP laminates. This study investigated the effect of cutting speed, orbital feed speed, hole diameter on the delamination defect and surface roughness responses generated in the drilled holes. The design of experimental tests was generated using the approach of Central Composite Design (CCD). The characterization of these responses was treated with the Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Response surface methodology (RSM). Results showed that the surface roughness is highly affected by the orbital feed speed (F) with contribution of 22.45%. The delamination factor at entry and exit of holes is strongly influenced by the hole diameter D (25.97% and 57.43%) respectively. The developed model equations gave a good correlation between the empirical and predicted results. The optimization of the milling parameters was treated using desirability function to minimize the surface roughness (Ra) and the delamination factor simultaneously.