Rough end mills with a serrated profile along the cutting edge are broadly used for suppressing chatter vibrations encountered during machining. The serrated profile of the cutting edge has a phase shift from one flute to the next and interferes with the regeneration of waviness of the cut surface. The edge serration alters periodically along the axial direction and therefore calculation of chip load for serrated tools is different from that of traditional tools. In the present paper, serrated cutting edges are analytically defined and geometrically modelled as a B-spline curve. The chip load along the serrated cutting edge is computed by a newly proposed universal algorithm. The presented algorithm computes the instantaneous chip load for any geometry including straight, helical, and serrated. The validity of the presented model is investigated geometrically using solid modelling techniques. In addition to geometrical model verification, milling tests for regular, serrated cylindrical, and serrated tapered ball end mills were conducted to validate the model’s accuracy. The simulation results confirmed that the presented model can calculate the chip load with high accuracy and can be implemented effectively for force simulations of serrated cutters.

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