A study on milling of glass fiber reinforced plastics manufactured by hand-lay up using statistical analysis (ANOVA)

Milling is the most practical machining (corrective) operation for removing excess material to produce a well defined and high quality surface. However, milling composite materials presents a number of problems such as surface delamination associated with the characteristics of the material and the cutting parameters used. In order to minimize these problem is presented a study with the objective of evaluating the cutting parameters (cutting velocity and feed rate) related to machining force in the workpiece, delamination factor, surface roughness and international dimensional precision in two GFRP composite materials (Viapal VUP 9731 and ATLAC 382-05). A plan of experiments, based on an orthogonal array, was established considering milling with prefixed cutting parameters. Finally an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was preformed to investigate the cutting characteristics of GFRP composite materials using a cemented carbide (K10) end mill.