Milling Physics

What happens where the flute meets the workpiece, and what it does to the cutter. These pages carry the model the simulation implements — the frames the numbers are expressed in, the criteria that decide whether a cut is survivable, and the two ways a cutter is lost: instantly, and slowly.

Ordered from what the model is handed, through the frame the numbers live in and instantaneous failure, to long-term wear and the levers that move both.

What the Model Is Given

• Cutter Geometry — How a tool is described to the model: the body types, the APT envelope and the ZR-table alternative, the upper beam, and the hone radius, weight and angles the force, wear and thermal models read
• Coolant Model — What the cutting-zone cooling does to the temperature model: the coefficient the running program's own M-codes select, the shipped presets, and how a condition is stored

Frames

• Milling Physics Coordinates — The workpiece, tool-running and spindle-rotation frames, and which sensor reports in which

Instantaneous Failure

• Process Machinability — The yield-stress, spindle-torque, spindle-power and thermal-yield ratios, what a value above 100% means for each, and the mesh-quantization ripple that is an artifact rather than a signal
• Probabilistic Peak & Cutter Crack — Why one narrow angular window of high contact makes an identical cut pass most of the time and crack a flute occasionally
• Relief Face Avoidance — The minimum relief angle the trochoidal edge path demands, and what happens when the clearance face presses on uncut material

Long-Term Loss and What To Change

• Tool Life & Wear — The wear model, the three quantities it reports, and where flank-wear width stops being a valid measure
• Cutter Adjustment Levers — Overhang, core radius and material grade: three cutter-side ways to cut a force peak without touching the NC
• Chatter — The force ceiling that keeps a cut out of the chattering regime, the two chatter cases it does not cover, and why strain hardening is not modelled

See Also

• Machine Capability — the equipment ceilings this physics runs into
• Measurement — where the coefficients and angles in this model come from
• Cutter — the application task that creates a tool carrying this geometry
• NC Optimization — what the optimizer does when a cut fails these criteria
• Scripting — the per-step values that carry these quantities out of a run
• Validation — how closely this model has been held against measurement