Determination of Optimal Cutting Conditions for Face Milling Operation

In a Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) system, one of the important module is determination of optimal cutting conditions. In the proposed work, multipass face milling operations, consisting of few rough as well as finish pass have been considered. The production cost per piece has been minimized under practical constraints of cutting force, cutting power, surface finish etc. and limits of cutting speed, feed and depth of cut. The common practice is to use a non linear programming method for finding out optimum cutting conditions for each single pass machining. Instead a simple solution technique has been considered for finding optimum cutting conditions for a single finish as well as a rough pass. Thereafter optimum number of passes, depth of cut, cutting speed and feed for each pass has been obtained. It has been observed that optimal subdivision of total depth of cut, to a good accuracy, is obtained by using simple single pass solution technique and Dynamic programming.