Effect of additional supports on surface errors in the peripheral milling of a flexible workpiece

This paper presents a model to predict the effect of spherical-tipped additional supports on the surface errors in the peripheral milling of a flexible workpiece. The model takes into account the instantaneous change of cutting forces during the milling process, the change of contact stiffness between the workpiece and spherical-tipped additional supports, and the change of workpiece thickness during the milling process. At each cutter angular step, contact stiffness between the workpiece and spherical tipped additional supports is calculated by an iterative method. According to the contact stiffness at each cutter angular step, the surface errors of the workpiece are calculated. At last, an experiment is executed to verify the model.