Relevant Roughness Parameters in Polishing Operations of Previously Milled Surfaces

For time and cost saving reasons, the lowest surface roughness possible is sought in milling operations. High speed milling is recommended in order to minimise the amount of material to be removed in subsequent finishing operations, e.g. grinding, electrical discharge machining or manual polishing. Several roughness parameters are usually employed for the characterization of polished surfaces. In this paper relevant roughness parameters are determined for polishing operations after side milling with cylindrical milling tool or after ball-end milling. It was observed that, in polishing operations after side milling, most relevant parameters are average roughness parameters such as Rk and Ra. On the contrary, in polishing operations after ball-end milling most relevant roughness parameters are those related to peaks, such as Rpk and Mr1.