Section 1 Advanced Manufacturing Technology

STUDY ON HIGH SPEED CUTTING MACHINABILITY OF

MEDICAL TITANIUM ALLOY Ti-6AI-4V
DU Qiaolian* CHEN Xuhui
t
ZHANG Kehua*
* ZhejiangNormal University, Jinhua Zhejiang 321004 China
t Zhejiang Biomet Medical Products co., Ltd. Jinhua Zhejiang 321016 China
Keywords: Medical titanium alloy, Ti-6AI-4V, high-speed
cutting, cutting machinability.
Abstract
On the basis of analyzing the material property and
microstructure feature of the Titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4v, the
paper clarified the cutting deformation mechanism of the
titanium alloy and stated that centralized shearing slipping is
the major characteristic of the titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4V at
high cutting speed. Through the milling machinability
experiment, the paper investigated the milling machinability
of titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4V material at high speed milling
condition and normal speed milling condition, which
indicated that high speed milling technology is effective for
improving machining efficiency of titanium alloy and
machining surface quality which is beneficial to apply widely
to daily production.
o Preface
Due to its prominent corrosion resistance property and
outstanding dynamic performance, Titanium alloy has been
widely used in aerospace and chemical industry. In recent
years, due to its outstanding biological compatibility, it also
used widely in medical engineering industry. Ti-6AI-4V
titanium alloy is the first practicable titanium alloy which is
successfully developed by U.s. in 1954, it occupies
85% of market demands of various titanium alloys and
become the top one alloy in titanium alloy industry. However,
titanium alloys are extremely "difficult-to-machine" material
due to the poor machinability and high chemical reactivity
upon the temperature of 600C and tend to react with oxygen,
nitrogen and hydrogen and form hardening layer with high
hardness which causes the successive cutting machining more
difficult [1]. Meanwhile titanium alloy material has low
elasticity modulus and large elasticity recovery. It is easily
deformed under the cutting force and the recovery power will
decrease the actual clearance angle of the tool and increase
the abrasion of the rear face with the machined surface. More
often than not, the titanium alloy work piece will be damaged
and the fatigue life of the implant will decrease as well.
When used as orthopedic implant, medical titanium alloy Ti-
6AI-4v reveals high quality requirement to the machining
surface, mostly it requires finish production. In practical
finish machining production, the machined surface quality is
a crucial guideline of weighing the cutting machinability [2].
Therefore, it has been an urgent problem in titanium alloy
machining to get an optimum machining surface quality in
finish machining production and improve the cutting
machinability. It is also necessary to make further exploratory
investigation to the workability of the difficult to machine
titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4v material.
On the basis of analyzing the material property of the
titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4v and its microstructure feature, the
paper aimed at investigating the high speed cutting
machinability of medical Ti-6AI-4v titanium alloy from
theoretically clarifying the deformation mechanism to the
cutting machinability at the parameters of high speed milling
and normal speed milling through out the milling machining
experiment. It was proved that the main chip deformation
characteristic of titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4v at high speed
cutting is centralized shearing slip; while high speed milling
is beneficial to improve the manufacturing efficiency and
worth to apply in production.
1 Material property analysis of medical
titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4v
Titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4v consists of 90% of titanium, 60/0 of
aluminium and 4% of vanadium. It has been considered as a
high safety implant material internationally due to the good
fatigue resistance, lightweight, corrosion resistance, fine
biocompatibility and it doesn't affect the nuclear magnetic
resonance and CT illness examination. Titanium belongs to
allotropism while its fusion point is 1720C. It forms as solid
hexagonal crystal pattern at the temperature lower than 882C
and named a titanium; Above the temperature of 882C, it
forms as space centred cubic lattice pattern and named
titanium; Making use of the above two features and adding
proper alloy elements will gradually transfer the phase
transformation temperature and phase content so to get
different organized titanium alloys. At room temperature,
titanium alloy has three basic structures. According to the
used state, it can be divided as ex type titanium, type
titanium and type titanium. ex titanium has good
machining character, while titanium takes the second
place and titanium the third. ex titanium and
titanium are for common use. Medical Ti-6AI-4V titanium
alloy belongs to ( type titanium alloy which contains
favourable synthesized mechanical property. Its Predominant
characteristic is as follows:
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speed, some scholars considered it was caused by the local
temperature rise generated by the plastic property of the
material which lead the thermal softening effect exceed the
deformation strengthening effect. Generation of concentrated
shearing slip has much to do with the thermophysical
property, deformation property and deformation speed of
material. It has been proved by many experiments that
material with concentrated shearing slip get low
thermophysical property, low thermal diffusivity and is easily
to generate concentrated shearing slip; For same sort of
material, the chip may transfer from strip to serration along
with the increasing of the cutting speed.
When machining medical Ti-6AI-4V titanium alloy, cutting
layer is influenced by the squash of the tool and generate
elastoplastic deformation. It slips along the shearing face at
the first deformation zone and separate at the nose of the
cutting edge while most of them form into chips with the
squash and friction of the tool at the second deformation zone
along with the rake face. The other small parts squash and rub
with the rear face and form into the machined face. The
deformation of the material centralized at first deformation
zone, therefore it is also called main deformation zone.
Provided it is a single shearing face at high cutting speed, the
right angle cutting model showed on Fig.2. is cutting rake
I
rjJ. h I a. . h Yo kn a h
ang e , IS S ear ang e, C IS cutting t IC ess, C
is chip thickness, therefore the deformation coefficient is:
Deformation coefficient , comparatively slip & and shear
angle rjJ are the guidelines to scale the cutting deformation
degree. The relationship of the three can be seen from
geometrical relationship of shear plane OA and shear angle rjJ
on Fig. 1-1 [5]:
= a
ch
ac (1)
;; = cos( - Yo)
sinrjJ
(1) Large Tenacity. 6b=900MPa of intensity,
y=4.45 xl 03kg/m
3
density.
(2) Low thermal conductivity. Thermal conductivity of
titanium is A=7.955W/mK which is 1/5 times of iron and
1/10 times of aluminium. The low thermal conductivity
coefficient of titanium makes the material poor in radiate the
heat during the cutting process. Therefore, it will cause the
temperature increase fast at the cutting angle and the tooI
wears off rapidly as well as suffering a short tool life.
(3) Low elasticity modulus. Elasticity modulus of Ti-6AI-4V
titanium alloy is E=11OGPa which is 112 times of steel,
therefore it is easily deformed during machining.
The machining property of material can be scaled by
durability of tools, quality of the machining surface, chips
formation and the complex degree of chips removal etc. It
was proved that the titanium alloy material belongs to
difficult to machine material [3].
2 Microstructure test analysis
Taking a piece of testing sample (10xl0xlO) from the Ti-
6AI-4V titanium alloy experiment material and adopted
different specification of emery cloth to obtain a high quality
grinding specimen; and then polished the specimen and used
solution of 1: 1: 20 proportion of hydrofluoric acid, nitric
acid and distilled water for metallographic corrosion
treatment for several seconds. Getting the titanium alloy
metallographic micrograph through the SS550 SEM,
magnification of700 which shows on Fig. 1:
Fig. 1 shows the structure of the Ti-6AI-4V titanium alloy
belonged to typical phase. The metallographic
structure of phase caused the titanium alloy hard to
cut. a phase increased the tenacity of the alloy, improving the
crystalline temperature, raising the cohesion of atom in the
solution and increasing the heat strength of the alloy while the
Bphase makes further strengthening for the alloy. Meanwhile,
the small deformation module of Ti-6AI-4V titanium alloy
also showed that titanium alloy is difficult-to-cut material.
There were three reasons: first of all, titanium had small
plasticity (especially during process) and small shrinkage of
chips; Second, due to its poor thermal conductivity at the high
cutting temperature, titanium a phase transfers to Bphase, and
enlargement of Bphase volume make the chip increase;
Thirdly, titanium chips react with many ambient media at
high temperature, such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and
become friable and lose plasticity. The chips stop to shrink
and the deformation coefficient decreased as well.
3 Investigation of titanium alloy deformation
mechanism at high cutting speed
d. cos Yo
tg'f'=----.;;....-
-sinYo
&=ctgrjJ+tg(rjJ-yo}=. cos Yo
slntlos(rjJ - Yo}
+1


(4)
Titanium alloy would bring concentrated shearing slip at high
cutting speed condition [4]. Concentrated shearing slip
belongs to one of the metal material deformation form, and
the essential condition for its occurrence depends on large and
high strain ratio with temperature rise in the slip band. It also
depends on the thermodynamic behavior of the material itself.
For the concentrated shearing slip deformation at high cutting
The deformation coefficient decreases with the increasing
of the cutting rake angle. The main reason is while rake angle
increasing, the shear angle rjJ increases too and cause the
deformation decreases. Under the condition of guaranteeing
the cutting edge strength, increasing the cutting rake angle is
beneficial to improve the cutting property of the titanium
alloy. In the meantime, the investigation also indicated [5]
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Section 1 Advanced Manufacturing Technology
that under the normal cutting level condition, deformation
decreases within the increasing of the cutting speed; the
increasing of the feed level increases the cutting thickness and
the deformation grade decreases too; the deformation grade
also decreases within the increasing of the strength and
hardness of the work piece material.
4 Investigation of high speed milling
machinability
4.1 Test conditions
(I)Test piece dimension: 420mm
x
200mm
x
24mm;
(2)Milling machine: X5040 vertical milling machine;
(3)Tool: YM30 carbide end mill, 4 tooth.
(4)Milling methods: Climb milling, peripheral milling.
(5)Cutting data: Normal milling: n= 500rl min, vf= IOOml
min, ap=IOmm, ae=O.2mm 0 High speed milling: n=
2500r/min, vf= 500mlmin, ap=10mm, ae=O.2mmo
4.2 Investigation of high speed milling machinability
experiment
(1 )Investigation of surface quality at high speed milling
When machining with normal milling parameter at dry
cutting conditions, the relationship between the distributing
depth of the milling surface hardening layer and micro
hardness are shown in Tab.I. But when adopting high-speed
milling parameter, the relationship between the distributing
depth of the milling surface hardening layer and micro
hardness is shown in Tab.2. It was acknowledged that the
surface micro hardness of the titanium alloy material at high
speed milling is much lower than at low speed milling. It was
proved that the grain size on high speed milling surface has
small deformation and small degree of cold work hardening
and the depth of the cold working hardening is quite shallow.
Testing the machining surface at different cutting speed with
surface roughometer, when using normal milling parameter,
the roughness is Ra6.4Jlm, while using high speed milling
parameter, the roughness is RaO.8Jlm. Surely, the roughness
at high speed is much lower than at low speed.
It is obviously that in order to improve the utility of the
numerical control machine and improve the surface quality of
titanium alloy, high speed milling technology has the
superiority that other machining method can not compare
with.
(2)Investigation of residual stress distribution on milling
surface
Titanium alloy material is extremely sensitive to stress state,
especially whether the residual stress on surface and
distributing condition could reasonably use or not is very
important. The residual stress on machined surface can be
classified as residual tensile stress and residual compressive
stress. The residual tensile stress can decrease the fatigue
intensity and life extension of the part while the residual
compressive stress sometimes can improve the fatigue
intensity and life extension of the parts. The unevenness of
the residual stress on various parts of the machining surface
will also make the parts deformed and also affect the shape
and dimension precision of the work piece. Therefore, we
need to understand and investigate the residual stress and its
distribution of titanium alloy Ti-6AI-4V at high speed milling.
The residual stress of the titanium alloy can be obtained
through X ray
Residual stress distribution on surface layer after low speed
milling, see Fig. 3. Residual stress distribution on surface
layer after high speed milling, see Fig. 4. It can be seen from
the Fig. that at low speed milling, the residual compressive
stress is high and the tensile stress distribution along the inner
surface layer is high too, therefore the material will deform
severely after machining and with the attenuation of the stress
during use, the parts would deform even severely and finally
cause the parts out of use. For high speed milling surface,
both the surface residual stress and the stress distribution
along the inner surface layer are small, therefore the stress
transfer slowly during use and the deformation on the parts
will be much smaller too.
5 Conclusions
Quality of biological medical metal material products directly
relate to the life and healthy of human being. Investigation of
cutting process machinability for medical Ti-6AI-4V has
great social benefit and profound scientific sense. The
investigation in this paper will establish a theoretical basis for
titanium alloy machining. Following conclusions was
obtained through the investigation of the high speed milling
workability:
(1) a + ~ phase structure makes it a difficult cutting
material, the chip deformation coefficient ~ decreased with
the increasing of the cutting rake angle r
0
. On the premise
of guaranteeing the strength of cutting edge, enlarge the rake
angle of tool could improve the cutting property of the
Titanium alloy.
(2)High speed milling technology is very effective for
increasing the titanium alloy machining efficiency and
improving the surface machining quality.
(3)when applying high speed milling methods to machine
titanium alloy material, the residual compressive stress
formed on the surface is lower than normal milling speed,
smaller gradient of residual stress formed at the surface and
the stress distribute much reasonable. Especially the
maximum tensile stress is much smaller and the stress
transfers slightly at the tensile stress zone. Therefore, the
stress attenuation will become gently while the parts at stress
and the deformation generated by the parts decrease, which is
beneficial to both the load and use ofthe parts.
(4)Adopting high speed milling machining titanium alloy Ti-
6AI-4V, the surface metal has little plastic property and high
micro hardness when forming the machining surface. The
harden degree will reduce considerably.
It can been seen that apply for high speed milling methods to
machine the titanium alloy can directly obtain the surface
quality by grinding, which has low stress, low surface
roughness and low depth of cold work hardening.
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Fig. I: Ti-6AI-4V Titanium alloy metallographic micrograph.
Residual stresslMPa
Fig. 2: right angle cutting model.
A
300
200
100
-100
-200
-300
-400
References
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Machinery Manufacture, 40(1): 11-15,2004.
[2] Davies M A, DurrererB, Pratt J R, "On the Dynamics of
High-speed Milling With Long Slender Endmills. CIRP",
Annals-Manufacturing Technology, 47(1): 55-60, 1998.
[3] Zheng Wenhu, Zhang Yulin, Zhan Mingrong, "Dialogue
of Difficult to Machine Material Process", Beijing
Publishing House, 2001.
[4] Ren Kaiqiang, " High Speed Milling of High Strength
Titanium Alloy", Thesisfor Master's Degree. Nanjing
University ofAeronautics and Astronautics, 2003.
[5] Tan Meitian, "Microscopic Study of Metal Cutting",
Shanghai Science and Technology Press, 1988.
[6] Perez-Bilbatua J I, "Conventional and High-speed
Machining of Titanium Alloys", Information Technology,
8(2): 43-49, 1997.
o 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225250
Fig.3: residual stress distribution on surface layer
after low speed milling.
300
200
100
o
-100
-200
Residual stresslMPa
-300 Depth of residual stress on surface/flm
-400
25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225
Fig.4: residual stress distribution on surface layer
after high-speed milling.
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