Mechanical model of five-axis side milling of drum-cone ball-end cutter based on differential principle

The drum-cone ball-end milling cutter is a new type of cutter for side milling of curved surfaces with a large radius of curvature. Compared with a ball-end milling cutter, its large cutting line spacing has the advantage of high efficiency. Cutting force is a basic index parameter of milling, and it is also the core concern of the future CNC machining towards intelligence. This paper draws on the differential principle to propose a cutter contact calculation method for the new drum-cone ball-end cutter in five-axis machining of free-form surface, and its mechanical model is also derived successfully. The cutter contact analysis includes two parts: the cutter contact area and the cutter contact interval, which define the real-time changing cutter edge segments involved in material cutting. The mechanical model includes two dimensions: the cutter location point and the tool path. The former describes the trend and magnitude of cutting force under the rotational motion of the cutter, and the latter describes that under the combination motions of cutter rotation and feed. The final simulations and experiments prove the validity of the above theories; the average error of the contact algorithm is 3.16%, and the average error of the milling force peak is less than 7.1%.