Flank Wear Modelling in High Speed Hard Milling of AISI D2 Steel

High speed machining has many advantages in reducing time to the market by increasing the material removal rate. However, final surface quality is one of the main challenges for manufacturers in high speed machining due to the increasing of flank wear rate. In high speed machining, the cutting zone is under high pressure associated with high temperature that lead to increasing of the flank wear rate in which affect the final quality of the machined surface. Therefore, one of the main concerns to the manufacturer is to predict the flank wear to estimate and predict the surface roughness as one of the main outputs of the machining processes. The aim of this study is to determine experimentally the optimum cutting parameters: depth of cut, cutting speed (Vc) and feed rate (f) that maintaining low flank wear (Vb). Taguchi method has been applied in this experiment. The Taguchi method has been universally used in engineering analysis.  JMP statistical analysis software is used to analyse statically the development of flank wear rate during high speed milling of hardened steel AISI D2 to 60 HRD. The experiment was conducted in the following boundaries: cutting speed 200-400 m/min, feed rate of 0.01-0.05 mm/tooth and depth of cut of 0.1-0.2 mm. Analysis of variance ANOVA was conducted as one of important tool for statistical analysis. The result showed that cutting speed is the most influential input factors with 70.04% contribution on flank wear.