New strategies for hole making in Ti-6Al-4V

The working conditions for the aircraft engines components demand a good response of their mechanical properties at high temperatures and aggressive environments. Those challenging conditions force the use of new materials like titanium (and nickel) based alloys, qualified as difficult-to-cut materials due to their low machinability. Among them, the Ti-6Al-4V is very widespread because of its high strength/weight ratio. On the other hand, a very demand task for aeronautical components is the hole making operation, being in most cases, the last performed operation. For this reason, drilling operation is strongly related to the quality and productivity since any machining error could damage the component in the final steps. Thus, drilling operation determines the minimum machining time which is reflected upon the cost per unit. This study focuses the attention on a relative new technique that could replace the conventional drilling resulting in a more added-value operation: ball helical milling (BHM). This new technique and a modified version (CBHM) were compared with a common drilling operation.