Simulation of the material removal rate Simulation of the material removal rate and tool wear to improve 5-axis automatic polishing operations

In plastic injection mould and prosthesis industries, "mirror-effect" polished surfaces are required for obtaining transparent parts or surfaces without scratches. Traditionally done manually, we have proposed to automate polishing on 5-axis machining centre. One of the main advantages of automatic polishing is the repeatability of the machine movements in order to achieve confined form deviations. However, the material removal rate (MRR) during polishing depends on parameters such as contact pressure, velocity, tool path and tool wear. We have thus developed a virtual tool to model the effective MRR and choose the correct polishing parameters before any machining regarding the specified form deviation. After a brief review of MRR modeling in the literature, we present our approach to polish surfaces on 5-axis milling centers as well as the simulation tool we have developed to predict the material removal rate. Our process has been tested on a part made of X38CrMoV5 steel (53 HRC) and measurements using a noncontact sensor allow us to compare the differences between our prediction and the polished surface.