MODELING AND AVOIDANCE OF STATIC FORM ERRORS IN PERIPHERAL MILLING OFPLATES

Peripheral milling of very flexible, cantilevered plates with slender end mills is modeled. The plate has varying structural properties in t he axial and feed directions due to metal removal. The cutter is model ed as a cantilevered continuous elastic beam with flexible clamping in the collet. The plate structural properties are updated using the fin ite element technique as the cutter and plate interact at changing con tact zones along the feed direction. The analytical cutting force and surface generation model considers partial separation of tool and plat e structures due to static displacements. The experimentally verified model predicts the cutting forces and dimensional surface error on the plate. The model identifies the required feed variation along the pla te in order to keep the static form errors within the specified tolera nce of the part. The model is developed to improve dimensional accurac y in peripheral milling of very flexible aerospace components.