Investigation of microstructured milling tool for deferring tool wear

An approach to defer tool wear in the micromilling process is investigated in this paper. Three different microstructure patterns, i.e. a number of micro-scale grooves which are in the directions of horizontal (0°), perpendicular (90°) and sloping at 45° to the cutting edge of the rake face, are generated by focused ion beam on three identical end mill cutters. The effects of these microstructures on tool wear resistance performance are investigated through three sets of slot milling trials on a NAK80 by using a CNC milling machine. Cutting forces are measured by a Kistler dynamometer. The machined surface roughness (Ra) is obtained by a white light interferometer. The milling cutters are inspected by a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) after each set of slot milling trial. The measurement results show that low cutting force is achieved when the microstructures are in the perpendicular direction rather than in the horizontal direction to the cutting edge is used. The tool with perpendicular microstructures to its cutting edge possesses the best tool wear resistance performance against other tested microstructured tools and the normal tool.