Experimental Investigation into Micro Machinability of Mg based Metal Matrix Composites with nano-sized reinforcements

Magnesium based metal matrix composite (Mg/MMC) has been widely used in various area such as aerospace and automobile due to its light weight and better mechanical properties. However the heterogeneous structure and high abrasiveness particles make it to become a difficult-to-cut material especially in micro scale machining, several critical issues in machining process become prominent with the decreasing ratio of uncut chip thickness and cutting tool edge radius. This research presents an experimental based investigation into the micro machinability of Mg/MMC reinforced with nano-sized particles, and the cutting forces, surface morphology will be characterized to assess the effect of each process parameters on size effect and micro machining process. The experiment was carried out on an ultra-precision desktop micro machine tools (MTS5R) with UT coat carbide end mills with 1 mm cutting diameter, and design of experiment method was employed with aim of producing statistically optimal results. It is believed that the results will be useful for both industries and academia.