High Speed Machining

Physical principle

Thanks to high cutting speeds, the cutting phenomena occurring between the workpiece, the tool and the chip are different from those observed in conventional machining. The heat released during chips shear does not have time to propagate to the workpiece and tool.. As a result, most of this heat is evacuated by the chips (about 80% in HSM versus 40% in conventional machining). It is also noted that as the cutting speed increases, the specific cutting energy decreases (the electrical power used by the machine is divided by the chip flow rate).

Advantages

Due to the increase in the cutting speed, it results in an increase in the feed speed. The advantages of HSM are the following:

• Increase in productivity: directly related to the increase in cutting and feed rates.
• Improvement of surface condition
• Preservation of the material integrity: the heat transmitted to the part being less important, there is less modification of its structure.
• Improved accuracy
• Dry machining: most of the heat being dissipated with the chips, cooling lubrication is no longer necessary.
• Possibility to machine thin workpieces: the tangential cutting forces decrease when the cutting speed increases, it is therefore possible to machine thin structures.
• Possibility to machine heat-treated steels (hardening, carburizing) without the treatment being altered by heat.

Fields of application

HSM is particularly used in such domains as aeronautics for mass processing, mold making for forging, casting or micro-milling.

(source : translated from Wikipedia)