Micro Drilling of Titanium Ti-6Al-4V: Influence of the Cutting Parameters on Tool Life.

Drilling is one of the material removal process and recently the working scale has entered the micro level. Micro drill life which is normally predictable in the conventional scale machining, remains uncertain to be defined as the failure mode of the micro-sized tool is completely different from the conventional ones. This research is initiated to investigate the distribution of micro tool life when drilling Titanium Ti-6A1-4V. The purpose of this study is to investigate the tool life performance based selected on cutting parameters; spindle speed, depth of cut, feed velocity and the drilling technique. These parameters were then evaluated using Taguchi method to identify the best parameters’ combination in achieving optimum tool life. The result shows that cutting depth is the most significant factor which influence a micro-tool life. The trend however, remains uncertain throughout the experiment as when the best combination parameters was employed, higher tool life could not be assured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]