Abstract—Mill turning is a process applied in the milling of a curved surface while the work piece rotates around its center. Depending on the eccentricity of the tool, when a flat-end mill tool performs a curved trajectory perpendicular to the rotation axis of the tool, its bottom part is engaged in removing material. This paper presents the techniques of tool path planning for the simultaneous turn-mill machining. The new turn-mill machine tools allow the parallel processing of both multiaxis milling and turning operations simultaneously. Turn-mill machine tools have been identified to be able to significantly reduce the total setup time and manufacturing cost by milling and turning the complex parts with a single setup. In this paper, computational geometric analysis of a complex electronic component has been presented for turn-mill machine tool operations. The electronic component presented in this paper is a type of low resistance resistor that acts as a sacrificial device to provide over current protection, of either the load or source circuit. Its essential component is a metal wire or strip that melts when too much current flows, which interrupts the circuit in which it is connected. This component is complex because it has huge number of operations and is very difficult to manufacture in 3 and 4 axis milling machines because it requires 46 tools to load at a time for manufacturing. Dimensions are also highly critical and complex. In this paper optimized process plan has been developed for the turn mill process of the electronic component which gives high surface finish and less machining time. CAD/CAM systems have been implemented to develop the optimum turn mill process plan.

Index Terms—Manufacturing process plan, Tool design, NX-CAD, NX-CAM, DMG 5-axis milling machine

Cite: P Anjaneya Reddy and B Subbaratnam, "Turn-Mill Process Optimization of a Complex Electronic Component," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol.3, No.4, pp. 518-526, October 2014.