Surface roughness of magnesium alloy AZ91D in high speed milling

Magnesium alloy is a material with a high strength to weight ratio and is suitable for various applications such as in automotive,aerospace,electronics,industrial,biomedical and sports. most end products require a mirror-like finish,therefore,this paper will present how a mirror-like finishing can be achieved using a high speed face milling that is equivalent to the manual polishing process. the high speed cutting regime for magnesium alloy was studied at the range of 900-1400 m/min,and the feed rate for finishing at 0.03-0.09 mm/tooth. the surface roughness found for this range of cutting parameters were between 0.061-0.133 μm,which is less than the 0.5μm that can be obtained by manual polishing. furthermore,from the s/n ratio plots,the optimum cutting condition for the surface roughness can be achieved at a cutting speed of 1100 m/min,feed rate 0.03 mm/tooth,axial depth of cut of 0.20 mm and radial depth of cut of 10 mm. from the experimental result the lowest surface roughness of 0.061μm was obtained at 900 m/min with the same conditions for other cutting parameters. this study revealed that by milling az91d at a high speed cutting,it is possible to eliminate the polishing process to achieve a mirror-like finishing. © 2016 penerbit utm press. all rights reserved.