Feasibility study of an absorber-integrated cutting tool in milling for chatter suppression

Vibration is a major issue during machining leading to short tool life and poor surface finish. Chatter occurring due to cutting tool flexible is a prominent issue in milling operation. Vibration absorbers have frequently been studied to suppress vibration and chatter during machining. Their practical applications have mostly focused on boring bars for turning or workpiece-mounted configurations in milling. Integration tuned mass dampers (TMDs) into cutting tools in milling is a challenging task due to the tool rotation. This study presents a feasibility study for an absorber-integrated cutting tool to suppress vibration and increase stability. It considers that the cutting tool is flexible in both radial directions and TMDs located on the shank of a milling cutting tool in both directions are analysed. Differently from commonly applied in the literature, the design parameters for the TMDs are directly tuned for the absolute stability limit rather than minimising/maximising the magnitude or real part of the frequency response function (FRF). The results show that tuning the design parameters considering directly the absolute stability limit provides a better chatter suppression performance in the practical cases where the milling cutting tool is almost identically flexible in both radial directions. The effect of the location of the TMDs on the shank is examined and an uncertainty analysis is presented. Finally, a design consideration for the application of such absorber-integrated tools is discussed.