A Study on Influence of Milling Types and Cutting Conditions on Surface Roughness in Milling of Aluminum Alloy Al6061-T6

Abstract

In this study, by using Taguchi method, with four controllable factors-three levels (milling type, axial depth of cut, feed rate, and spindle speed), the orthogonal array L27 was used to investigate the effects of milling type and cutting conditions on the surface roughness. By analysis of variance (ANOVA), the influences degree of milling type, axial cutting depth, feed rate, and spindle speed on the surface roughness were 9.26 %, 12.85 %, 12.69 %, and 63.08 %, respectively. The interaction factors of these factors that have a quite small influence on the surface roughness. The surface roughness was modeled as a quadratic regression with the confidence level is more than 99.82%. This model was successfully verified by comparison of experimental and predicted results. The optimization process of surface roughness was performed by both Taguchi method and the ANOVA analysis with the same results. The optimum value of surface roughness was 0.374 µm that was obtained in the half up milling, at a cutting depth of 0.4 mm, a feed rate of 480 mm/min, and a spindle speed of 5000 rpm.