On the machining characteristics of H13 tool steel in different hardness states in ball end milling

This paper investigates and compares the machining characteristics of AISI H13 tool steel in hardness states of 41 and 20 HRC in the ball end milling process. The machining characteristics are illustrated through three types of process outputs from the milling experiments: the milling force, the chip form, and the surface roughness. Characteristic differences in these process outputs are shown to reflect the hardness effect of the tool steel on the ball end milling process. The mechanistic phenomena of the milling process are revealed by the six shearing and ploughing cutting constants extracted from the milling forces. The experimental results show that all the cutting constants of the softer tool steel are greater than those of the hard steel, indicating that higher cutting and frictional energies are required in the chip shearing as well as in the nose ploughing processes of the softer tool steel. The higher cutting energy is also attested by the more severely deformed, shorter, and thicker chips of the softer steel. Surface roughness of the hard steel is shown to be considerably better than that of the soft steel at all cutting speeds and feed rates and is independent of cutting speed, whereas the surface roughness of the softer steel is significantly improved with increasing cutting speed.