Micro dimple milling on cylinder surfaces

The paper presents a micro dimple machining on a cylinder surface with a two-flutes ball end mill. When the cutter axis is inclined and the depth of cut is less than the tool radius, non-cutting time, during which neither of the two cutting edges contacts the workpiece, appears in a rotation of the cutter. The rotation of the workpiece and the feed of the tool are controlled so that the cutting areas do not overlap each other. In order to incline the tool with respect to the tangential direction on the cylinder surface, the tool is located at a position oriented at 45° from the top of the cylinder. An analytical model is presented to control the shapes of the dimples with the cutting parameters. The presented machining is verified in cutting tests with measuring the shape and the profile of the dimples. Pre-machining operations are conducted to have a high cylindricity of the workpiece in longitudinal turning and polishing. The cutter runout of the tool is also eliminated by adjusting the orientation and the position of the tool in the collet chuck with measuring the cutting force. The micro dimples are machined accurately as they are simulated.