Induction Heat Assisted End Milling of Inconel 718 and Ti6Al4V Alloys

Inconel 718 is the most widely used in the aerospace industries, especially for gas turbine hot section components. Titanium alloys, on the other hand, have very high strength-to-weight ratio making them very suitable for aircraft engines and airframe manufacture. They account for 30% of the total engine mass in commercial and 40% in military projects. However, both these strategic materials have poor machinability, as a result of which they have dominated the major research interests in metal cutting industries in the past decades. One of the techniques to improve machinability is the use an external heat source during machining. LAM applications offered significantly lower cutting force, higher metal removal rate and smoother surface finish, however, high costs of lasers slowed down its implementation. A new approach is heat assisted machining using inducting heating suitable for end milling operation. This book reports a comparative analysis of machinability of these two very strategic materials and their behavior to induction heat assisted machining in terms of tool wear, cutting forces, surface roughness and vibration/chatter.