Suppressing notch wear by changing the tool path in the side milling of a Ti-6Al-4 V alloy

Despite many advantages offered by titanium alloys compared to other conventional materials in the industry, several manufacturing challenges arise, and they are associated with titanium’s mechanical, thermal, and chemical properties. As a result of these characteristics, titanium alloys are low-machinability materials. Machining path strategies have proven their influence over surface finishing, machining forces, and tool life to reduce machinability-related problems. Most studies have shown the impact of the path strategies on frontal or end milling processes, and few are related to side (tangential) milling. Finally, based on the self-propelled rotary tool (SPRT) technique, which alters the cutting tool portion during machining, this work evaluates surface finishing behavior, machining forces, and tool life using two different tool path strategies (sinusoidal and linear) on the side milling of Ti-6Al-4 V alloy. The results show that the association between an adequate tool path strategy (sinusoidal) and the cutting parameters improves surface finishing (more than 130%), decreases cutting forces (about 20%), changes tool wear mechanisms, and increases tool life significantly (4–5 times) without productivity loss. Wear mechanisms that promote notch wear were suppressed, and uniform flank wear predominated. Consequently, the sinusoidal path has brought benefits to the cutting process. It is a technology that can have great interest and is easily applicable in the industry.