Test for Evaluating the Performance of Micro Milling Processes

The growing interest of several industrial fields (biomedical, medical, electronic, defence, aerospace, etc) on miniaturized components leads to an increased interest on micro cutting processes. When approaching these processes, phenomena that can be neglected in macro scale become predominant. For this reason material microstructure, material and geometry of the tool, machine-tool and process parameters must be correctly defined. Another aspect of interest in micro scale cutting is the definition of tests for qualifying the process performance. The present paper aims to propose a testing procedure for evaluating the performance of a micromilling process considering the machine-tool, tool-holder, tool and workpiece fixtures chain. This procedure is based on a series of micro channels realized by consecutive steps. A case of study is reported. The results allows to better understand the performances of the process and of the chain composed by the machine-tool, the tool-holder and the tool.