Design of Serrated End Mills for Improved Productivity

Cutting forces continues to be a major limitation in machining operations. In order to avoid high cutting forces, low feed-rate or low axial/radial can be utilized which decrease the productivity. Special end mills such as serrated or crest-cut milling tools can be used in roughing operations to decrease the cutting forces and increase the productivity. In this work, mechanics of serrated end mills are modeled. Moreover, effects of serration shapes on the mechanics of milling are investigated and methods for designing optimum serration shapes are presented. Proposed model predictions are verified through experiments.