Tool wear and surface quality during milling CFRP laminates under dry and LN2-based cryogenic conditions

Carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP) are widely used in the aerospace and automobile industries because of their ultralight weight, high strength, excellent corrosion resistance, and anti-fatigue properties. However, the machining of CFRP is still challenging due to its super hardness and sensitivity to heat. Cryogenic milling is a kind of sustainable manufacturing process which is considered to have great potential for processing CFRP. This work is devoted to analyzing the tool wear and surface quality under dry and cryogenic conditions based on liquid nitrogen (LN2) and also provides a reference for selecting parameters of CFRP processing in industries. A series of tests were conducted under various cutting speeds, feed per tooth, and LN2 jet temperatures. In order to reveal the changing laws of tool wear and surface quality, flank wear bandwidth (VB), surface roughness (Sa) and burr factor (Fb) were carried out. The experimental findings have shown that tool wear is suppressed at high cutting speed and feed rate. In addition, surface quality is significantly improved at an appropriate temperature, and burr damage was also effectively suppressed with the temperature dropping, while tool wear is severer at − 196 ℃ than in dry conditions.