Originalarbeiten á Originals Holz als Roh- und Werkstoff 58 (2000) 278±283 Ó Springer-Verlag 2000

Wood material influence in routing operations: the MDF case

A. Aguilera, P. J. Meausoone, P. Martin

278
Wood machining is strongly in¯uenced by the wood tex- Schnittkraft und Leistungsaufnahme beim Bearbeiten von
ture. Thus, it is a very important ®eld of research in order MDF verschiedener Dichte leicht berechnet werden.
to achieve the optimum wood machining conditions. This
study focusses on MDF, a far more homogeneous wood
1
based material than solid wood. First of all, MDF cutting is
Introduction
described in function of moisture content and density. For
For this research, the Tool-Material Couple methodology
constant machining conditions, the behavior of the cutting
was applied. The objective of this methodology is to de®ne
force components were observed as a function of density
the optimum machining conditions for a tool cutting a
changes. Then the surface roughness was analyzed. The
known wood material in order to reach a maximum tool
same method was further applied for variable cutting
life with a correct surface roughness. Thus, the necessary
conditions. The evolution of cutting power and forces was
machining conditions must be determined within satis-
observed with the aim to forecast it, if the species factor
factory limits. Then, the ®rst step is to know the material
(Ke) and moisture content factor (Kh) are known. After the
in its physical aspects and its relationship with the cutting
values of these factors have been adequately determined,
parameters. Thus, this paper allows to apply the Tool-
the cutting forces and power cutting levels for the different
Material Couple with a better understanding of the wood
layers of density found in MDF can be easily calculated.
material machining behaviour.
MDF is a very widely used material. But the missing
Einfluû der Materialeigenschaften bei der understanding of the in¯uences of different parameters
maschinellen Bearbeitung von MDF like its physical properties (density and humidity) badly
Die Holzbearbeitung wird wesentlich beein¯uût von der
affects its machining conditions and results in poor ®nal
Holzstruktur, die daher daher ein bedeutendes For-
product quality. In this paper, the following questions
schungsgebiet ist, um die optimalen Bearbeitungsbedin-
are set: 1) What is the relationship between the physical
gungen zu ®nden. Diese Arbeit beschraÈnkt sich auf MDF-
properties of this material and the cutting forces exer-
Platten, deren Materialeigenschaften viel homogener sind
cised on it and the power required? 2) Under well
als bei festem Holz. Unter konstanten Bearbeitungsbe-
known cutting conditions, what will be the resulting
dingungen wurde zunaÈchst der Verlauf der SchnittkraÈfte in
surface roughness?
AbhaÈngigkeit von der Dichte verfolgt. Darauf wurde der
In fact, MDF doesn't cause big machining problems.
Ein¯uû der Ober¯aÈchenrauheit gemessen. Danach wurden
Nevertheless, problems arise concerning the edges due to
dieselben Methoden fuÈr variable Schnittbedingungen an-
gluing and ®nishing applications. The cutting conditions
gewendet. Der Verlauf der Schittleistung und -KraÈfte
which determine the edge quality of MDF are not suf®-
wurde beobachtet, um sie voraussagen zu koÈnnen, wenn
ciently understood, in order to ®nd the appropriate sur-
die Ein¯uûfaktoren des Materials (Ke) und der Feuchte
face roughness for application to ®nished products.
(Kh) bekannt sind. Wenn die Werte dieser Faktoren mit
Surface roughness control is important to achieve the
ausreichender Genauigkeit bestimmt sind, kann die
expected ®nal uses of MDF.
To estimate the cutting forces, the relation
F ˆ Fo á Ke á Kh á ae was applied, where Fo is the force
per cm of chip width and ae is the width of the cut in mm
(Martin et Sales 1994).
A. Aguilera (&)1, P. J. Meausoone
University Henri Poincare ± Nancy I, Ecole Nationale SupeÂrieure MDF can be cut in different density zones (species
des Technologies et Industries du Bois, constant Ke) allowing to obtain variable levels of the
27, rue du Merle Blanc ± B.P. 1041, cutting forces. Thus, the questions arise:
88051 EPINAL Cedex 9, France
· what is the relationship between density and cutting
P. Martin forces/cutting power?
Ecole Nationale SupeÂrieuredes Arts et MeÂtiers, 4, rue Augustin · if we change the cutting conditions for a constant chip
Fresnel, Technopole 2000, 57078 Metz, Cedex 3, France thickness, which will be the surface roughness quality in
a given density zone and for a variable chip thickness?
Korrekturanschrift:
1
Universidad Austral de Chile, Facultad de Ciencias Forestales, Another point of interest for the cutting conditions
Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile theory is the knowledge of the humidity constant (Kh).
Constants are already known for some wood species and
Cutting speed : 4.30 m/s (equivalent rotation speed of
plywood, but not in the MDF case. 6000 rpm)
The aim of this research is a better understanding of the Depth of cut : 2.0 mm (max. 14 mm)
MDF's material as regards his machining properties with Width of cut : 5.0 mm (max. 30 mm)
small diameter tools and to know the levels of the cutting Chip thickness : 0.08; 0.16; 0.32 mm
forces required, their effect on surface roughness and of
the different density layers. The basic problem is to de- Material properties: humidity and mean density are
termine the optimal cutting conditions required for a evaluated in paragraph 4.1.
known tool life and the appropriate surface roughness to The cutting parameters are summarised in Fig. 1. The
the ®nal use. cutting power measuring was performed using a power-
meter and a plotting table (Fig. 2). The cutting forces
2 (Figs. 3 and 4) were measured with a piezoelectric dyna- 279
State of the art mometer coupled to charging ampli®ers and to a com-
It is well known that wood density has a signi®cant in- puter ®tted with an acquisition card and the software for
¯uence on the cutting forces and on the surface roughness signal treatment. The measuring of the surface roughness
as the ®nal result. For some authors (Kivimaa 1950; Koch (Fig. 5) was carried out with a ``Topovise'' laser ± vision
1964), the effect of an increase in density is more impor- system developed by the ENSTIB (Triboulot et al. 1995).
tant than the total cutting force. These data were incor-
porated in previous work (Zerizer 1991), where the cutting
forces measured on MDF were related to its density pro®le.
Nevertheless, as this material has a variable density pro®le,
the determination of the species constant (Ke) remains
unknown.
Studies performed by (Cyra and Tanaka 1995a, 1995b)
show that, under constant density conditions, the surface
roughness increases when the advance per tooth is in-
creased. In the case of wood species characterized by
variable density, surface roughness does not only depend
on the species density level, but on its anatomy, too (Leban
and Triboulot 1994).
Fig. 2. Maximum cutting power behavior
3 Bild 2. Verlauf der maximalen Schnittleistung
Materials
A routing machine CNC Dubus with the following char-
acteristics was used:
· Spindle maximum power of 1.5 kW
· Spindle rotation speed: 1800 to 12000 rpm continuous
variation
· Continuous variable advance speed: 0 to 12 m/min.
The cutting tool has the following characteristics:
The following cutting conditions were selected in ac-
cording to the technical data provided by the manufac-
turer:

Diameter: 14 mm number of knifes: 1 Fig. 3. Cutting force values perpendicular to the feed direction
Attack angle: 18° material of the tooth: carbide (Fx)
Sharp angle: 57° Bild 3. Verlauf der Schneidekraft senkrecht zur Vorschubrich-
tung (Fx)

Fig. 1. The cutting parameters

Bild 1. Schneideparameter
 4.2
Tests

4.2.1
Cutting forces
The cutting force results are listed in Table 1. The density
pro®les with the Ke¢ factor for the MDF are shown in
Fig. 7. The cutting forces were measured for each layer and
the correspondent Ke¢ factor was calculated. The equation
parameters presented in Fig. 7 for both types of cutting
were then determined for all the samples.
280
N.B.: the Ke factor indicates the combined effect be-
Fig. 4. Cutting force values in feed direction (Fv) (Fy) tween material density and the type of cut. So we call this
Bild 4. Verlauf der Schneidekraft in Vorschubrichtung (Fv) (Fy) factor as Ke¢.
The results obtained for the cutting forces (N) accord-
ing to the type of cut (a) in accordance to variations of
density (d1...d4) and chip thickness (ec) are shown in
Fig. 8 and Table 2).
By comparing the cutting force simulation [see Equa-
tions (2) and (3)] with the measured results (Table 3), we
can see that the values are very close. Thus in ®rst ap-
proximation, the estimate values obtained for the Ke¢
factors appear to be correct. In Fig. 8 we can see that as the
density increases the cutting forces become higher and
higher. The same conclusion applies to the chip thickness.

4.2.2
Fig. 5. The measuring of the surface roughness Power cutting measures
Bild 5. Messung der Ober¯aÈchenrauheit As noted above, the measured values taken by the power
meter and plotting table provide the maximum power cut.
A program was developed that enables the determination
4 of the mean and maximum values of the power cut.
Results Figure 9 and Table 4 show the estimated and measured
values for the maximum power cut. With these data, we
4.1 can deduce the mean values that allow us to know the
Density and moisture content cutting force, and hence validate Ke¢.
We have carried out a moisture content and density de-
termination on the samples as described in Fig. 6:
± one ®rst layer of 5 mm thickness (a): density ˆ 0.89
± one second layer of 5 mm thickness (b): Table 1. Results of the cutting force measurements
density ˆ 0.77 Tabelle 1. Ergebnisse der Schnittkraft-Messungen
± one third layer of 5 mm thickness (c): density ˆ 0.67
Type of cut a) b)
± one fourth layer of 10 mm thickness (d) [a + b]:
density ˆ 0.82 Zone of cut (a), Ke¢ = 1.511 Ke¢ = 1.293
density 0.89
At the same time, samples of each layer were dried for Chip thickness (mm) Total cutting force (N)
72 h a 105 °C resulting in a mean moisture content of 7%. 0.08 37.15 33.74
0.16 50.51 42.39
0.32 66.17 54.60
Zone of cut (b), Ke¢ = 1.168 Ke¢ = 0.832
density 0.77
Chip thickness (mm) Total cutting force (N)
0.08 28.24 22.15
0.16 39.43 25.68
0.32 51.83 37.01
Zone of cut (c), Ke¢ = 0.954 Ke¢ = 0.730
density 0.67
Chip thickness (mm) Total cutting force (N)
0.08 24.97 19.08
0.16 30.17 24.14
Fig. 6. Samples for moisture content and density determination 0.32 41.74 30.71
Bild 6. Probenentnahme fuÈr die Feuchte- und Dichtebestimmung
 281
Fig. 7. Variation of the species
factor Ke¢ as a function of the
density pro®le of MDF (layers
a, b according to Fig. 6)
Bild 7. AbhaÈngigkeit des Spe-
ziesfaktors Ke¢ vom Dichte-
pro®l einer MDF-Platte (Lage
der Schichten a, b entsprec-
hend Bild 6)

where:

Pc: power of cut (W) ap: depth of cut (mm)

Z: number of knifes
N: rotation speed (rpm)
Fc: total cutting force (N)
Ke: species constant
a and b: coef®cients of cut type
D: diameter of the tool (mm)
F0: force per cm of chip width
Kh: humidity constant
ae: width of cut (mm)
e: chip thickness (mm)

4.3
Surface roughness
Each series of tests was analysed by means of the vision
laser method ``TOPOVISE'', the results of which are ex-
pressed in terms of standard deviation. Thus, the basic
Fig. 8. The cutting forces in different density zones (cutting type a) factors for the following analysis are the raw deviation in
Bild 8. SchnittkraÈfte in verschiedenen Dichtezonen (Schnitttyp a) surface roughness and wavenness, and the values of YY
and XX which correspond to the peak heights and to the
distances between each peak (Fig. 10), and the XY values
Table 2. Results of cutting force measurements for type of cut (a)
(Fig. 11) that is the relationship between both of the latter.
and variations in density and chip thickness The experimental results presented in Fig. 12 show the
Tabelle 2. Ergebnisse der Schnittkraft-Messungen fuÈr Schnitttyp in¯uence of an increasing chip thickness (a1 ˆ 0.08;
(a) sowie verschiedene Dichten und Spandicken a2 ˆ 0.16 ; a3 ˆ 0.32 mm). For a constant density level of
0.89, the standard deviation increases with the chip
Density thickness and the surface quality decreases. The same
dl d2 d3 d4 tendency was also found for the other densities, but with
higher standard deviation values.
ec (mm) 0.89 0.82 0.77 0.67 In Fig. 13 the density effect can be more clearly ob-
0.08 37.15 (N) 36.83 28.24 24.97 served: for a constant level of chip thickness, the surface
0.16 50.51 45.04 39.43 30.17 roughness is worse at low density (a ˆ high density;
0.32 66.17 55.57 51.83 41.74
b ˆ mean; c ˆ low). This effect is still more intense after
increasing the chip thickness. Thus, for an homogeneous
material like MDF, when compared to solid wood, the
The calculus method for the power cut is based on the most determining factors as regards surface roughness are
variation of the chip thickness according to the following chip thickness and density. This means that the combined
formulae: effect of high density and low chip thickness enables to
p obtain the optimum levels of surface roughness.
P c ˆ Z  N  Fc  ap  D 1† It was observed that the weak density zone machining
with Fc ˆ F0  Kh  Ke  ae 2† (mean zone of the plywood) and especially with a strong
chip thickness, results in a hairy zone in the edge line
and F0 ˆ a ‡ b  e 3† impairing further the optimum surface roughness. This
 Table 3. Calculated and measured cutting forces (N) for cutting type (a) and (b)
Tabelle 3. Berechnete und gemessene Werte der Schnittkraft bei Schnitttyp (a) und (b)

Type of cut a) Measure Type of cut b) Measure

Fc (N) Fc (N)
Density ec (mm) Ke¢ Fc (N) Density ec (mm) Ke¢ Fc (N)

0.89 0.08 1.511 40.47 37.15 0.89 0.08 1.293 34.63 33.74
0.89 0.16 1.511 48.30 50.51 0.89 0.16 1.293 41.33 42.39
0.89 0.32 1.511 63.97 66.17 0.89 0.32 1.293 54.74 54.60
0.77 0.08 1.168 31.28 28.24 0.77 0.08 0.832 22.28 22.15
0.77 0.16 1.168 37.34 39.43 0.77 0.16 0.832 26.60 25.68
282 0.77 0.32 1.168 49.45 51.83 0.77 0.32 0.832 35.22 37.01
0.67 0.08 0.954 25.55 24.97 0.67 0.08 0.730 19.55 19.08
0.67 0.16 0.954 30.50 30.17 0.67 0.16 0.730 23.34 24.14
0.67 0.32 0.954 40.39 41.74 0.67 0.32 0.730 30.91 30.71

Table 4. Estimated and measured values for the power cut

Tabelle 4. GeschaÈtzte und gemessene Werte der
Leistungsaufnahme

Test PC mean (c) PC max (C) PC max (m)

al 21.2 25.3 25.0

a2 25.3 33.5 35.0
a3 33.5 49.9 53.0
bl 16.4 19.5 18.0
b2 19.5 25.9 24.0
b3 25.9 38.6 36.0
c1 13.4 16.0 17.0
c2 16.0 21.1 23.0
c3 21.1 31.5 34.0 Fig. 10. Surface characterization: XX and YY parameters of the
(c) = calculated power cut surface
(m) = measured power cut Bild 10. Charakterisierung der Ober¯aÈche: XX- und YY-Param-
Nomenclature tests eter
a = density 0.89
b = density 0.77
c = density 0.67
1 = chip thick. 0.08 mm
2 = chip thick. 0. 16
3 = chip thick. 0.32
Note: Pc mean was calculated with a mean chip thickness and Pc
max with a max chip thickness

hairy zone could be caused by too slight ®ber cohesion and

also by the fact that a high chip thickness, which requires a
very considerable cutting force, can produce ®bers

Fig. 11. The relation (XY) of the distances between peaks (XX) to
the height of the peaks (YY) proves more reliable to characterize
a surface
Bild 11. Das VerhaÈltnis (XY) der Entfernung zwischen den Peaks
(XX) zur PeakhoÈhe (YY) erweist sich als verlaÈûlicher zur Cha-
rakterisierung einer Ober¯aÈche

wrenching when there is a change in direction of the main

cutting force.

Fig. 9. The calculated and measured cutting power
Bild 9. Berechnete und gemessene Leistungsaufnahme beim
Schnitt
5
Conclusion
a) It's dif®cult to derive a general index of the species
constant value Ke¢ for the MDF. Considering the partial

Fig. 12. Surface roughness for a density of 0.89 and variable chip
thickness
Bild 12. Ober¯aÈchenrauheit bei Dichte 0,89 und variabler Span-
dicke
machining of the edge, it is necessary to know the
constant behavior for a speci®c density layer thus al-
lowing a better evaluation of the actual results accord-
ing to the objectives proposed.
b) The Ke¢ factor across the MDF pro®le is estimated by
checking the cutting forces and power test values.
c) The simulation of the cutting conditions using a precise
determination of Ke¢ was entirely satisfactory in relation
to the tests carried out.
d) The machining of the different MDF density zones has
to be performed according to the aspects of surface
roughness. It is desirable to apply the machining of high
density zones for all pro®le machining to prevent the
developing of hairy edges.
e) All of these data are of interest when applying the
methodology Tool Material Couple, allowing us to ®nd
the satisfactory cutting conditions for this material in
order to obtain a maximum tool life.
283
Fig. 13. Surface roughness for a chip thickness of 0.08 and
variable density
Bild 13. Ober¯aÈchenrauheit bei einer Spandicke von 0,08 und
variabler Dichte
References
Cyra G, Tanaka C (1995a) On line control of router feed speed
using acoustic emission. Proceedings of the 12th International
Wood Machining Seminar, pp. 215±229
Cyra G, Tanaka C (1995b) The effects of wood ®ber directions and
tool wear on routing behaviours. Proceedings of the 12th Inter-
national Wood Machining Seminar, pp. 401±411
Kivimaa E (1950) Cutting force in woodworking. The State In-
stitute for Technical Research, Finland. Publication 18: 102
Koch P (1964) Wood machining processes. A volume in the wood
processing series. Edited by Frederick F. Wangaard, Yale Uni-
versity
Leban JM, Triboulot P (1994) DeÂfauts de forme et eÂtats de surface.
In: Le Bois (ed) MateÂriau d'IngeÂnierie. ARBOLOR, pp. 334±363
Martin P, Sales C (1994) Processus de coupe. In: Le Bois (ed)
MateÂriau d'IngeÂnierie. ARBOLOR, pp. 289±309
Triboulot P, Sales C, Zerizer A, Martin P (1995) Correlation of
fracture toughness of bonded joints with quality (roughness) of
knife-planed MDF surfaces. Holzforschung 49: 465±470
Zerizer A (1991) Contribution aÁ l'eÂtude de l'usinabilite du MDF.
TheÁse Universite de Nancy I