Energy Usage Analysis of Carbide End Mills on AISI 1045 Steel

Machining and manufacturing processes have a strong influence on industry development and economic growth. Many important factors have been studied in order to optimize these processes. Over the last few years energy and power have been used as parameters to verify the efficiency of these processes. Monitoring the state of energy consumption may serve as an indicator of the manufacturing process behavior. The main challenge is to translate the energy usage into a practical indicator, since monitoring energy presents a challenge due to the dynamic characteristics of the machines and the diversity of associated factors interacting with each other during the machining processes. Tool wear and tool life expectancy are other important issue that have a significant impact on both, cost and efficiency, especially, in computer assisted processes. Although it has been continuously studied over many years, until now, monitoring the state of tool wear has remained a complex task. Thus, in this study, a specific type of carbide end mill is analyzed using, a potential energy approach. The energy limit for a cutting tool with specific physical and chemical features will be estimated since it can simplify the tool life estimation and the tool change timing prediction. A series of experiments are performed with carbide end mills on AISI 1045 steel, periodically measuring the tool wear and the required energy until the end of tool life, to analyze if a cutting tool could transmits a specific amount of energy to the work piece material before reaching the end of its useful life.