Analysing and Optimizing 2.5D Circular Pocket Machining Strategies

Though the circular pocket milling seems to be an old manufacturing task, it is nice to have thorough investigation among the different machining strategies, because in spare part production a frequent repeatable shape behaviour. As usual, at pocket milling the roughing operation is critical, because the excess material is in a closed area to the shape thus not possible to fix optimal cutting parameters for the whole area. In this exercise, we will deal with how the NC operational cycles and CAM systems could organize tool paths for circular pockets. This question is very important for the users because the selected strategy will influence the machining time and the tool life which determines the machining cost. In this article, several strategies were been compared through simulation and metal cutting experiments. During experiments, the material removal rate, the cutter engagement, and the cutting force were investigated alongside the tool path. At optimal tool paths, these parameters should be constant, because thus the cutting tool could provide maximum efficiency. It is found during experiments that the pocketing strategies used nowadays are far away from the optimal, and only the CAM-generated tool path strategies can execute the acceptable. The reason is because the tool path generation methods are made based on the part geometry without considering the technological aspects. In this article analysis of current, available strategies were been made, but over that two own-developed algorithms based on technological parameters were been discussed focused on optimal tool path to achieve maximum productivity.