High Speed Cutting of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics

The effects of high speed cutting (HSC) on metallic workpiece materials have been widely studied and the benefits are commonly employed in the machining industry. However, in the machining of composite materials, these effects have not yet been a focus of significant research work and core questions such as what impact HSC cutting parameters have on tool wear, process forces and workpiece quality remain open. As such, the work described in this paper shall focus on the use of HSC cutting parameters with spindle speeds up to 60000 rpm for the machining of carbon fibre reinforced composites. Workpiece quality and tool wear are quantified in dependence of cutting speed and feed rate and the known phenomena of reduced cutting forces at high cutting speeds are examined in the case of CFRP machining.