Surface Roughness Obtained With And Without The Use Of A Mechanical Spindle Speeder In Milling: A Comparative Study

In this paper a comparative study between the surface roughness obtained in a milling process and in the same process using a mechanical spindle speeder with aluminum workpieces is presented. Mechanical spindle speeders are one of the cheapest solutions to upgrade a conventional machine tool to high-speed machining. The two machining processes were made under the same cutting conditions, covering a wide range of the cutting conditions with all the experiments. The surface roughness (R-a) is the value measured to obtain the comparative between the two machining operations. It must be noted that when the cutting speed is low (less than 6000 rpm), independently of the feed rate, the surface roughness obtained with the spindle speeder is higher. Nevertheless, the surface roughness is less at higher values of the tool cutting speed when the spindle speeder is used for machining. As result, the optimal cutting conditions for the use of mechanical spindle speeders are determined.