Development of a new milling cutter for aluminium honeycomb

Bonded honeycomb structures are widely used in the air space industries and are made of an integral combination of solid aluminium structural parts and a honeycomb core. The main problems in manufacturing honeycomb structures are associated with close tolerances and high surface quality. These requirements are highly important because of the necessity for achieving the highest bonding strength with the facing of various other elements. To meet these goals at increased productivity levels both materials, i.e. solid aluminium and honeycomb have to be cut with the same tool in a single pass. This paper deals with the design of a new cutter which produces high surface quality while machining both honeycomb and solid aluminium. The most relevant parameters were selected based on the analysis of a series of experiments. Once the initial design was obtained, the cutter dimensions were determined by maximizing the cutter volume using an optimization technique. A detailed sensitivity analysis was subsequently carried out to study the effect of change in cutter dimensions for different cutting speeds.