Study of surface integrity in ultrasonic elliptical vibration assisted cutting of Ti-6AI-4V titanium alloy

摘要

Ti-6AI-4V titanium alloy has been widely used in aerospace engineering, biomedical engineering and marine engineering because of its unique mechanical, thermal and chemical properties. However, the current cutting technologies are difficult to achieve ultra-precision machining of Ti-6AI-4V titanium alloy. The ultrasonic elliptical vibration assisted cutting (UEVC) is considered as a promising technology for achieving the ultra-precision machining of difficult-to-machine alloy. In this study, the UEVC technology is used to study the machinability of Ti-6AI-4V titanium alloy with polycrystalline diamond tool. Firstly, the UEVC principle was presented. Then, the comparative investigation of the conventional machining with the UEVC machining was performed. The surface damage and the surface roughness are the focus in this paper. The measurement results indicated that an ultra-precision machining of Ti-6AI-4V titanium alloy is difficult to achieve by conventional cutting process. In contrast, an almost flawless machined surface with roughness value Ra of 25.1 nm is obtained by using the UEVC technology.