The effect of tool flexibility on back-cutting in end milled surfaces

End milled surface texture is inhomogeneous and often exhibits complex lay patterns. An important contributing factor to these surface characteristics is the back-cutting effect. This effect causes cutter tooth mark patterns on the surface in the forward and reverse tool feed directions. In this pap er, the dependence of back-cutting on end mill flexibility and its influenc e on the slot floor surface texture are modeled and experimentally verified . It is shown that the extent to which tool flexibility affects back-cuttin g is determined by the resultant cutting force system and not the feed forc e alone. The variation in the amount of back-cutting typically observed acr oss the width of a milled slot is also explained by this model. The model, although simple in form, yields reasonably good agreement with the measured surface profiles.