The influence of cryogenic cooling on milling stability

Cryogenic cooling is emerging as an effective process for high performance machining. However, the influence of cryogenic cooling on milling stability is seldom reported. This paper involves experimental study on the effect of cryogenic cooling on milling stability, using a dedicated cryogenic cooling system to applying liquid nitrogen (LN2) jet to the cutting zone. We observe that cryogenic cooling leads to higher stability limit compared with conventional milling operations, which indicates that the cutting efficiency can be improved greatly in LN2 environment as opposed to the conventional one. The stability improvement is explained from the perspective of machining dynamics parameters variation between the two conditions. Cutting force coefficients and modal parameters of spindle-tool system are identified during cryogenic machining, then milling stability lobe diagrams are predicted by time domain and frequency domain methods. On the basis of milling stability analysis, the enhancement of stability boundary is attributed to the significant reduction of cutting force coefficients during cryogenic cooling. Additionally, the experiment result indicates that cryogenic cooling decreases the dominant modal frequency of the spindle-tool system, which shifts the milling stability boundary slightly to lower spindle speed range. The explanations are verified by a plenty of cutting tests.