Milling is becoming an increasingly universal machining operation for producing parts used in aerospace, automotive, and life science engineering industries. The characteristics common to such parts are a high level of complexity and structural flexibility, both of which usually necessitate using low radial immersion milling operations. Low radial immersion milling operations involve interrupted cutting which induces chatter vibration under certain cutting conditions. The stability behavior of low immersion helical end milling processes is investigated in this paper. Time Finite Element Analysis (TFEA) is suggested for an approximate solution for delayed differential equations encountered during interrupted milling. An improved TFEA is proposed which includes the effects of helix angle variations on cutting force, cutting time and specific cutting force coefficients for a 2 DOF vibratory system. To verify the proposed method, experimental tests have been conducted which prove that the improved TFEA method accurately predicts the stability behavior of low immersion milling.

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