COMPARING DIFFERENT STRATEGIES TO THE MILLING PROCESS OF POCKETS IN DIES WITH INTERCHANGEABLE INSERT MILLS

Manufacturing of dies is a field where machining processes are widely used, representing a major factor of the production costs. Due to the characteristics of these parts, the milling process overcome the others because of its versatility and the low times when machining surfaces. In spite of that, the production of dies has one critical point that is the rough machining of pockets. The chip removal from the pocket, the cutting parameters variations during the machining and the need of reducing times and costs, are problems that turns this operation a fundamental key. The target of this work is to find optimal cutting parameters when opening pockets. To reach this target, tests comparing different pocket machining strategies and cutting speeds were made. During these tests, the electric parameters of machine motor were monitorized to get the relationship between them and tool wear. The main conclusion is that the strategy of machining pockets has little influence over the kind of wear presented by the tool, but the dive strategy gives longer lives and lower operation time when compared to the other strategies tested. The power consumed by the spindle motor can be used as an indicative of tool wear state.