Estimation of effective error parameters in high-speed micro-endmilling

In micro-endmilling, tool alignment errors and tool manufacturing errors such as flute deviation and cutting edge offset from the tool axis are relatively large compared to the associated chip load and machined features. Two effective error parameters have been defined to represent the effect of these errors on the machining accuracy and process performance: maximum radius of rotation and difference in the radii of rotation. Methods have been developed to estimate these parameters based on feature measurement on a machined artifact and acoustic emission signals during machining. Experiments were conducted to estimate the effective error parameters of three different tools at several different orientations. The estimation results show that there are significant variations in the effective errors among the tools, which indicates that estimation of the effective error parameters in micro-endmilling is important for achieving good processes performance on-line.