Complex three-dimensional miniature components are needed in a wide range of industrial applications from aerospace to biomedicine. Such products can be effectively produced by micro-end-milling processes that are capable of accurately producing high aspect ratio features and parts. This paper presents a mechanistic cutting force model for the precise prediction of the cutting forces in micro-end-milling under various cutting conditions. In order to account for the actual physical phenomena at the edge of the tool, the components of the cutting force vector are determined based on the newly introduced concept of the partial effective rake angle. The proposed model also uses instantaneous cutting force coefficients that are independent of the end-milling cutting conditions. These cutting force coefficients, determined from measured cutting forces, reflect the influence of the majority of cutting mechanisms involved in micro-end-milling including the minimum chip-thickness effect. The comparison of the predicted and measured cutting forces has shown that the proposed method provides very accurate results.

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Off-line feedrate scheduling is an advanced methodology to automatically determine optimum feedrates for NC code modification. However, most existing feedrate scheduling systems have limitations in generating the optimised feedrates because they use the material removal rate or the cutting force model which is dependent on cutting conditions. This paper proposes a feedrate scheduling system based on an improved cutting force model that can predict cutting forces accurately in general end milling situations. Original blocks of NC code were divided into smaller ones with the optimised feedrates to adjust the peak value of cutting forces to a constant value. The acceleration and deceleration characteristics for a given machine tool were considered for realistic feedrate scheduling. Moreover, a modified type of Z-map model was developed to reduce the entry/exit angle calculation error in the cutting force prediction and named the moving edge node Z-map (ME Z-map). Pocket machining experiments show that the proposed method is accurate and efficient in maintaining the cutting force at a desired level.