Cutting Forces and Tool Wear Investigation for Face Milling of Bimetallic Composite Parts Made of Aluminum and Cast Iron Alloys

Bimetallic parts are used in many industries for weight and cost reduction of workpieces working under high loads and wear. One application for this type of composite material is in automotive industry. In this work the tool wear and cutting forces in the face milling of bimetallic parts made of aluminum and cast iron were investigated. A356 and GG25 alloys that are common materials for bimetallic engine cylinder block, were selected as a material for aluminum and cast iron samples respectively. Machining length was 3.6 meters in the experiments and the tool wear was calculated on the flank face of tool using image processing method (KNN approach). Results indicated that with the machining parameters selected here, the wear of aluminum sample is not significant but the wear for cast iron and bimetallic materials was considerable. It was also discovered that the wear and machining force for bimetallic parts are much higher than samples with cast iron material and the analogy was observed between cutting force and tool wear quantities. From this, it can be concluded that instead of time consuming wear tests, the tool wear trend in face milling of bimetallic parts can be predicted from cutting force measurements. It is also conculded that KNN image processing method is very accurate for calculating the tool wear.