Advances in efficiency in the groove milling of aluminium EN AW 2024-T3 with zig-zag and trochoidal strategies

Abstract Manufacturing process engineers must continually take decisions to make the processes efficient. Manufacturing time, surface finish and energy consumption are aspects to be optimized in machining. This study analyzes the efficiency of groove milling in milling aluminum alloys EN AW 2024-T3 with zig-zag and trochoidal strategies. Dynamic milling is designed to maximize the removal rate and optimize the tool performance. This generates a discontinuous cutting with minimum of heat reducing build-up with an optimal chip removal minimizing cutting edge wear. The influence of lateral pitch, feed per tooth, cutting speed and coolant pressure has been analyzed. The depth of curt has been adapted for each strategy and tool type. The study was proposed through a factorial design of experiments by the Taguchi method. The machining time (T) and energy consumption (EC) show a strong influence of the lateral step (a e ) in conventional milling. A similar level of influence appears with the feed per tooth (f z ) on the trochoidal. The roughness (Ra) is more influenced by cutting speed (V c ) for conventional milling and by feed per tooth (f z ) and lateral pitch (a e ) for the trochoidal.