Effect of Cutter Runout on Chatter Stability of Milling Process

Chatter-free cutting parameter selection is a very important topic in milling process. Thus, numerous researches have been done to predict the stability lobes of milling process. Practical milling process is always influenced by multiple modes and cutter runout which may induce multiple delays. However, in most previous work conducted in time domain, stability lobes were traditionally predicted by only selecting the most flexible mode, which inevitably loses the accuracy in some speed ranges. Especially, combined effect of multiple modes and cutter runout makes stability analysis more difficult. To this end, this paper aims at revealing the influence of cutter runout on milling stability when multiple modes occur. Numerical and experimental studies are carried out to study this issue. Prediction algorithm is established by taking into account the physical status of process. Simulated and measured results confirm that the occurrence of cutter runout can locally increase the stable region, as shown in Fig. 2. Besides, numerical studies are also conducted to investigate the combined effects of feed rate, helix angle and cutter runout.