This article presents a universal simulator of instantaneous loads on the cutting edges of ball-end mills for the processing of layered metal materials. The ANFIS-mechanistic simulator of cutting edge loads is designed for all typical geometries of ball-end mills and for layered materials with different machinability of individual layers. Two ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System) models are included in the simulator, which, based on the instantaneous radial thickness of the chip and the geometry of the spherical part of the ball-end mill, predict the material coefficients for the material layers. Comparison of the predicted tool loads with experimental data shows that the simulator accurately predicts the direction and magnitude of the instantaneous loads of the ball-end mill cutting edges when milling 3-layer metal material with different machinability of individual layers. The largest observed deviation of simulated load magnitudes for all verification machining tests is 21.7 %.

During the continuous casting of steel billets, several geometrical, inner and surface defects can occur due to the thermomechanical behavior during solidification. One of them is rhombic distortion (i.e. rhomboidity), which can lead to the occurrence of off-corner cracks and twisting of cast billets during further plastic deformation (i.e. rolling). Based on data of 2088 cast batches (64 different hypoeutectoid steel grades), 109,514 billets, produced from January 2022 to September 2022 in Štore Steel Ltd. (Slovenia), chemical composition (content of C, Si, Mn, S, Cr, Mo, Ni and V), casting parameters (average casting temperature, average difference between input and output cooling water, melt level, average cooling water flow and pressure in the first and second zone of secondary cooling) the linear regression and genetic programming were used in order to predict rhomboidity of continuously cast billets. The rhomboidity, in our case defined as relative diagonal difference, was determined using in-house developed computer vision system for measuring of rhomboidity. Based on the modelling results 9 batches (419 billets) of 42CrMos4 were cast in September 2022 with a 10 % higher water pressure in the first zone of secondary cooling (from 2.41 bar to 2.67 bar). The rhomboidity of continuously cast billets improved by 18.18 % (from 1.43 % to 1.21).