A STUDY ON CHIP CURLING AND BREAKING PD. LIU, R.S. HU, HT. ZHANG AND X.S. WU Dalian University of Technology, PR. China ABSTRACT: It was proved that the cause of chip curling is due to the bending moment formed at the deformation zone, owing to the non-colinearity of the resultant force on the rake face and the resisting force on the shear plane. The criterion for chip breaking consists of the sum of two bending strains: (1) The bending strain caused by the cutting process and the effect of chip breaker in the forward direction . up curling); (2) The bending strain caused by encountering the flank face of the tool in the backward direction. The chip would break, if the sum reaches a critical value which depends on the work material and cutting conditions. Chip control and breaking has become a problem of increasing importance in modern automated machining operations, however its solution has not been satisfactorily carried out either theoretically or practically. The reason for chip curl is not clear yet, therefore the means for its control are mainly by "try and see” methods, unreliable and time-consuming. The problem must be tackled fundamentally from the point of view of mechanies so as to find out the cause of chip curl, then the status of strain be enumerated with reference to its criterion of breakage. 1. ‘THE CAUSE OF CHIP CURL Although there were some authors who explained the cause of chip curl as the result of velocity dif- ference between the bottom and top layer of the chip, yet it was just a description of the phenomena, nothing to do with the fundamental cause from the point of view of mechanics. It has been proved in our research work that the cause of, chip curl is due to the bending moment formed at the deformation zone owing to the non-colinearity of the resultant force on the rake face and the re- sisting force on the shear plane, as shown in Figure L/1/2/3/ Itis a new cutting model or a refined model of the conventional Merchant's, adaptable for stress ana- lysis. The proofs of this new model can be summa. rized as follows: (1) The slip-line field for orthogonal machining can be constructed by method of visio~>plasticity. A characteristic slip line IJ (equivalent to the 507 Workpiece Fig. The new cutting model with bending moment conventional shear plane) is taken for analysis ‘The hydrostatic stress distribution on this slip line is calculated, then the point of application of the total resisting force F, can be found. The normal stress distribution on the rake face can be obtained by split tool method, and the point of application of the resultant force F, can also be found. From the results of numerous tests, we found that the point of application of F’, deviates not much from the mid-point of IJ, less than a few percent of the length of shear plane, while the point of ap- plication of F, fluctuates considerably with the cutting thickness and rake angle. The directions of these two forces F, and F’, are the same, deter- mined by the rake angle and the ratio of normal508 A STUDY ON CHIP CURLING AND BREAKING component and tangential component of F, , be ing of a definite value. Therefore it is obvious that F, and F’, are not colinear generally, and this is, proved by our experimental data, /1/2/. The bending moment formed at the shear plane, M, which balances the couple formed by F, and F%, can be calculated by the following formula Jas: M_=F{I,,c0sf, —1, sin( +B, —7,)] In —Faly a where F, is the normal component force of F, on the rake face, F,, is the normal component force of F7, on the shear plane, Ig and 1 are the distances of F, and F’, from the tool tip respectively, @ isthe shear angle, 1 is the rake angle, By is the friction angle of the rake face. (2) Considering the bending moment calculated, we can calculate the normal stress on IJ at the point of partition J of the chip flowing away from the work material. We found that if this stress is tensile and exceeds the tensile strength of the work material, the form of chip will be discontinuous. We verified this criterion first at very low speed /1/, so as to avoid the influences of strain rate and temperature, and later at high speeds /2/. In all cases it corresponded well with experiments. This proves the correctness of our supposition and the method of calculation. (3) We found from our experimental data that the effects of bending moment Mc on chip breaking correspond well with practice with the variation of cutting speed, thickness, rake angle etc. (4) We also found that the bending moment can be either positive or negative, i.e. away from the rake face or towards. This can be demonstrated by a simple test by cutting orthogonally with a te. stricted land tool at varying cutting thickness. When the cutting thickness is small, the chip bends upward. With the increase of thickness, the point of application of F’, tends to shift upward, while that of F, is restricted by the land width, the bendig moment decreases, approaches zero, then increases in the negative direction, therefore the chip becomes straight, and then bends downward, as shown by Figure 2./3/. a) v=100m/min, f=0.2mm/r, 4: land width 45mm, cutting #45 steel ») 3mm / r, other conditions same as a) y ¥ ©) $=0.39mm / +, other conditions same as a) Fig.2 Tests with restricted land tool (5) With the new cutting model we can calculate the naturally curling radius of chip p, by the fol- lowing formula /4/, ag(Va + Va) Po = WV, - Va) ePD. LIU, RS. HU, HLT. ZHANG AND XS. WU 509 where ag, is the chip thickness, Va, is the flow velocity of the bottom layer of chip, Vaz is the flow velocity of the top layer of chip. Therefore the natural bending strain of chip ey is equal to a, ta @) If &, reaches certain limit value, the chip would break. However, this is usually not desirable, be- cause it results in high cutting force, low tool life and splinter chips. 2. THE CRITERION OF CHIP BREAKING FOR TOOLS WITH CHIP BREAKER ‘As we have mentioned above that chip might break, if itis subjected to a bending moment in the cutting process large enough to cause the stress ex- ceed its bending strength, however this is not de- sirable in practice. Generally the tool geometry and cutting parameters are so chosen to give low cutting fotee and good tool life, so a chip~break- ing groove is provided for chip control. The parameters of the groove are optimized to break the chip not promptly after leaving the chip break- ex, but on encountering the uncut surface of the work or the flank face of the tool. ‘Thus the chip is given an opposite bending moment to bend the chip in the backward direction as shown in Figure 3 ge aa Fig.3 Chip breaks in the backward direction. after encountering the flank face In Figure 3, p; is the chip radius before leaving the chip breaker, p, is the enlarged chip radius, when it encounters the tool flank face. The force acting at the free end of the chip causes the rough side of the chip to bend under tension, so itis more liable to break. ‘The chip in question is subjected to two kinds of bending strain: (1) The bending strain caused first by the cutting process and additionally by the effect of the chip breaker ep. @ ‘The + sign in the formula refers to the tensile stress at the smooth surface of the chip, and —sign, the compressive stress at its rough surface. ‘The difference between the bending strains ¢,, and is the additional strain caused by the effect of chip breaker ty, thus t ore. -8, thay (3) (2) The bending strain caused by the reactive force at the tool flank face to bend the chip in the re- verse direction until it breaks ens (6) ‘The breaking of the chip is due to the combined ef: fect of the above two strains éyp and éyqg. In some literature, only the latter item is taken as the criter- ion of chip breaking, and the bending strength of the chip material is used as the limit, it does not comply with practice. The history of straining of the chip during its formation has to be considered, ise. bypy and the bending strength of the chip with its rough surface under tension is quite different from the behavior of the work material because of the presence of microcrack on the rough surface. Let the total bending breakage strain be denoted by tye/3/, (a) We are interested in the value of éyy, as chip breaks under different cutting conditions. Is it constant, for a given material? Our answer is No, accordingS10 A STUDY ON CHIP CURLING AND BREAKING to our experiments, Figure 4 and Figure 5 are test results plotted with Fup ANE Egy ABAINSt yy It is found from Figure 4 that the total bending breakage strain Zyq is not constant, varying with bending strain ty. The smaller gp, the smaller Bp Sup Varies nearly directly with e,. This can be secn easily from equation (7). | y,~ 1.757 160m / minf=0.30mm / 17914) BH 39mm / 1379" 14°) 9 9,= 1:83(¥= 100m / min,f= 030mm / np 14”) 0.16 7.~ 1.9100 60m /min,=0.30mm /r99~ 14°) 94" 2.25(v= 160m / mint 030mm / .79= 0" ) 0.157 @ 4,=2.27(v= 100m /min,f=0.39mm /19¢=0°) /* 7,=2.33(0= 100m / min,f=0.30mm / 174-0" 0.14] 6 3, -2-44= 60m minf=0.30mm ee 0% 0.13} Too! Materiai:yT15 12, Work Material-#45 Steet 11 0.10] 0.09] 0.08) 0.07 0.06) 0.035 0.05 0.07 0.09 O11 0.13 «,, 0.03) 0.02| 0.01 Fig.S From Figure 5, we find that the strain due to backward bending tq, is not constant either, de- creasing with the increase in the forward bending strain ¢,, during cutting. That is to say, the more severe is the chip strained during cutting, the less strain would be required to make it break in the backward direction. If we prolong the curve in Figure 5 to meet the abscissa, We get tq, the limiting value of fyp Which would break the chip with zero Seay This means @ too large strain required for chip breaking, as we mentioned in the previous section. On the other hand, we can find a critical value Saye (Fig.5), above which the chip is liable to break with certain éyqy- This is the solution we desire. 3. OPTIMIZATION OF THE CHIP BREAKER DESIGN What is the value of ty. desired? how can it be found? We can adjust &, by properly choosing the tool ‘geometry, the cutting parameters and the width of chip breaker. Once the optimum tool geometry is chosen, and the cutting parameters are selected, the adjustment can be done by varying the chip breaker width L (Figure 3). The value of eg. can be got easily through a few simple tests. According to our experimental data, pc is about 0.044 for #445 steel. Now we are going to discuss the optimization of chip breaker width. We found there is an optimum width L, which corresponds to the minimum shear strain of the cutting process, as shown in Figure 6. In Fiugre 6(a) is the e,,-L curve and the é4-L curve. 6,, is the additional bending strain caused by the effect of the chip breaker. Figure 6(b) shows the 7(7)-L curve and e(@)-L curve. 7, is the shear strain of the deformation zone without chip breaker; 7/, is the same with chip breaker. ¢ and e, are their effective strains respectively, ie. taking bending strain and shear strain both into consider- ation. We can see from Figure 6(b) that corre- sponding to a certain value of L, there is a mii mum shear strain for the cutting process which al- so means a good tool life/3/. Symbols in the figure marked with "’” denote the data while the chip breaker is in effect.PD. LIU, RS. HU, H.T. ZHANG AND XS. WU sul v= 100m / min,f=0.39mm / y= 100m / min,f=0.30mm /r y= 60m /min,f=0.30mm /¢ y= 160m / min,f=0.30mm /r y= 100m / min,f=0.23mm / r Tool Material: YTIS Work Material:##45 Steel 4° = 90° 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 35 L(mm) (@) Tos 2.00 1.80 1.70 1.60 ee) 1.10) 1.50 1.00} SSS, a 0.90 130 20 2.530 3540 45 50 55 Lem ) fmm) Fig.6 The Variations of Strains with the change of L 4. CONCLUSIONS We have used the above new theory to solve the problem of chip breaking in some highly automat. ed N.C. turning machines in a big steel mill in China and got very satisfactory results. Here are the conclusions: (1) The cause of chip curl is due to the existence of a bending moment in the deformation zone, caused by the non~colinearity of the resultant force acting by the tool rake face and the resisting force at the shear plane, (2) The problem of chip breaking can be solved analytically in the following manner: Let the chip have an appropriate bending strain by suitably choosing the tool geometry and cutting parameters with a view to satisfactory tool per: formance, Optimally design the chip breaker parameters to give the chip a suitable bending strain so that the chip will break satisfactorily on encountering the flank face of the tool or the work surface. (3) The new findings presented by this paper pro- vide a sound basis for the prediction of chip cur- ing and breaking, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to express our thanks to Prof. G.F. Micheletti of Torino University for _ his encouragemennt and Prof. E. Usui of Tokyo Insti- tute of Technology for his discussions. 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