International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 16521658 www.elsevier.

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Continuous chip formation in drilling

Feng Kea,*, Jun Nib, D.A. Stephensonc
b a Former student of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA c General Motors Powertrain Pontiac, MI 48340, USA

Received 27 July 2004; accepted 22 March 2005 Available online 3 June 2005

Abstract The formation of coil continous chips in drilling often leads to chip disposal problems. This paper investigates the drill chip formation process of continuous chips (spiral chips and string chips). Chip removing motions and forces are analyzed. Two models are developed to predict the spiral and string chip formation, respectively. Based on the level of bending due to the chip generation at the cutting edge and deection by the ute, these models qualitatively investigate relationship of the point angle and ute helix angle on the average chip length. Drilling experiments validate the chip length for spiral and string chip predicted by both models. q 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Chip formation; Continouse chip; Drilling; Chip ejection; Chip evacuation

1. Introduction The success of a drilling operation primarily depends on the ability of producing chips that can be readily ejected from the drilled hole. Long chips are usually not desirable because the chips can tangle along the drill body which have to be removed manually. Chip formation and chip breaking mechanism have been studied for many years. Starting with the Merchant chip formation model in 1945, many other studies have contributed to the understanding of this area. Although the level of understanding has been adequate, the results of past studies were based on simple cutting tools, which have the same tool geometry and cutting parameters along the cutting edge. There has been less research on complicated cutting tools, such as drills, whose geometry and cutting parameters differ along the cutting edge. To simplify the drill cutting process, the drill cutting edge is conventionally treated as a summation of several small segments with each segment having a homogenous
* Corresponding author. Present address: Automotive Engineering Academy of Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (Group), No. 50 Yixian Road, Shanghai, China. Tel.: C86 1333 1888 320. E-mail address: fengke_personal@yahoo.ca (F. Ke).

0890-6955/$ - see front matter q 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.ijmachtools.2005.03.011

geometry and cutting parameters [1]. Very few studies have investigated the drill chip formation from the unique features of the drilling process. Among the few works done for drilling chip formation, Kahng and Koegler [2] suggested that torque applied in the same direction as the chip rotation would break the chip easily. They also stated that the resulting friction torque opposed the rotation of the chip caused it to unfold. The chip would break until the strain produced reached the fracture strain. They further argued that the chip rst generated was longer than the others because it encountered less resistance due to friction than subsequent chips, and the chips generated later tended to have interference with the slowed chips which were previously generated and thus were more susceptible to breakage. Another work on ejecting helicoidal chips was reported by Sakurai et al. [3] who investigated the breaking mechanism of the continuous cone-shaped spiral chips produced during intermittently decelerated feed drilling. From this work, it was found that chip breakage occurred when the resulting friction torque between the hole wall and chip exceed the breaking torque of the chips. This research focuses on the differences of chip formation in drilling as compared with the conventional cutting processes. The differences are: A. Chip formation is not completed when chips leave the cutting edge. Chips will be further deformed as a result of the interaction of the chips with the drill ute and hole-wall.

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Nomenclature b u f g q j rp p r td tc vcw drill ute helix angle drill rotation velocity r angle between vectors of u ! K v fd and v c r r angle between vectors of u ! K v fd and u ! chip natural ow angle string chip ow angle drill point angle pitch of the chip drill radius depth of cut chip thickness absolute chip moving speed relative to workpiece vcf v cf v fd Dd Ff Fw Fff Ffn K Wb chip moving speed along the drill ute vector of chip moving velocity along the drill ute vector of drill feeding velocity diameter of the drill friction force of chips against the drill ute friction force of chips against the hole wall the portion of Ff parallel to the ue surface the portion of Ff normal to the ute surface chip deformation ratio, which is: KZtc/td drill web thickness

B. Chip ow direction is restricted by the cutting speed difference along the cutting edge. Since the cutting speed is much slower at the point close to the drill center (inner cutting edge) than at the point close to the drill peripheral (outer cutting edge), initial chips are cone shaped and tend to ow to the drill center. C. The chipute interaction is a combined effect of the drill point geometry (point angle) and the drill ute geometry (helix angle). Furthermore, this interaction will change the chip deformation after it leaves the cutting edge and result in different chip lengths and shapes. Although initial drill chips are all spiral cones, they will change into various shapes when drilling deeper due to the interactions of the drill ute and hole wall. In this paper, analytical chip formation models have been proposed based on the chipute and chipwall interactions for spiral and string chips. These models reveal that the average chip lengths of spiral chips and string chips are related to the drill point angle and ute helix angle.

2. Chip formation in drilling Chip formation has been studied in great depth for turning and milling processes. These cutting studies have also been extended to the drilling process. One of the widely applied methods in studying the drilling process is to divide the cutting edge into several small elements and treat each element as a simple cutting tool. Although this method provides a simple solution, it neglects some unique features of drill chip formation. 2.1. Chip shapes in drilling Chip shape is the most important factor for the smoothness of a drilling process. The drilling process will be smooth if chips are well broken. However, most ductile materials do not break during drilling, and instead, form continuous chips.

Based on the chip forming mechanisms, continuous chips can be categorized to spiral chips and string chips. When chips are initially generated, because the inner cutting edge moves signicantly slower than the outer cutting edge, the inner chip is inherently shorter than the outer chip. This difference in length within the chip forces it ow to the drill center instead of perpendicular to the cutting edge. Furthermore, the center part of the drill ute forces the chip to curl and form a spiral shape. However, when spiral chips move in the drill ute, in order to maintain its spiral shape, they have to constantly rotate on their own axis. This rotation motion causes the spiral chips to have difculty maintaining their shape as the hole gets deeper. If chips cannot keep up with the rotation motion, they will either break or be forced to move along the ute without spinning, and form string chips. In drilling, unlike in turning, the spiral chip curl radius is primarily determined by the ute space rather than the rake surface near the cutting edge. Preliminary experiments were performed with several conventional twist drills diameters ranging from 4.5 to 10 mm to drill materials of AISI 1048 and AISI 1038. Different spindle speeds and feed rates were used to investigate their inuence on the chip curl diameter. From the chips collected, all the measurements showed the same feature: the diameters of the spiral chips were close to the maximum circle that ts the drill ute. String chips are formed when the initial spiral chips cannot maintain their original shape. String chips have a much smaller difference in chip ow speed along the cutting edge than spiral chips. Thus, during the transformation from spiral chips to string chips the part of the chip close to the drill center (Inner chip) will ow faster and the part close to the drill periphery (Outer chip) will ow slower than their initial speeds, causing the inner chip be thinner and the outer chip be thicker than their initial shapes. The thin and weak inner chip is usually sheared into irregular zigzags. The change of chip owing speeds at the cutting edge also creates a bending moment which results from the tension stress at the inner chip and compression stress at the outer chip.

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Fig. 1. Chip shape change in one deep hole drilling.

This bending moment causes string chips to cluster to the drill center. During the process of string chip formation, the chip should have the strength to counter the bending moment caused by the stresses within the chip and the friction forces on the chip. Thus, a chip that is either too thin or too soft will be deformed into an irregular chip instead of string chip. Another experiment was done in this research to investigate the inuence of feed rate on the smoothness of drilling process. In this experiment, the drilling smoothness was evaluated by measuring the maximum depth that can be drilled without chip clogging. The material used was AISI 1038 and the drills were 6.35 mm in diameter. Conventionally, a small feed rate is recommended for drilling deep holes. However, the result of the experiment revealed that the maximum drilling depth was not reached by the smallest feed rate (15 mm/rev), but is reached at a medium feed rate (around 3060 mm). When the feed rate was too small, the chip would not have enough rigidity to form a string chip, and became twisted in the ute, which could easily cause chip clogging. 2.2. Chip shape transition in deep hole drilling During deep hole drilling, chips usually do not maintain a uniform shape as drilling depth increases. The initial chip always has a spiral shape. When deeper drilling is done, because maintaining chip rotation becomes difcult, the spiral chip unwinds. The unwound spiral chip eventually becomes a string chip. During the transition of spiral chips to string chips, there are a few types of intermittent shapes, depending on the material, chip thickness and size of the drill. For instance, chips can gradually reduce the rotational speed and increase the pitch of the spiral chip. When the pitch of the chip is the same as that of the drill ute, the chip becomes a string chip. String chips are mostly moved by the pushing forces generated by the cutting process (see Section 4). This pushing force is determined by the total friction force resulting from the chip contacting with drill ute which increases with the drilling depth. When the friction force exceeds the chip strength, chips will buckle and break. Broken long chips may block the drill ute and prevent the succeeding chips from being removed. Due to the large resistant force, these succeeding chips will be broken into

irregular short shapes. This chip form transition correlates well with the drilling torque changes. It is observed that signicant torque rising is always accompanied by the ending of long string chips and starting of deformed and sheared short chips. Fig. 1 shows the chip shapes of a 3.2 mm drill drilling AICI 1038 with a speed of 3000 rpm and feed of 150 mm/min. The hole was nished with three pecks: 05, 515, and 1530 mm. Chips from each peck show the chip changing from spiral chips to string chips and nally irregular short chips.

3. Chip moving forces of spiral chips The two major motions in the formation of spiral chips are the rotation motion on the chip axis and axial motion along the drill ute. Fig. 2 shows the forces of the spiral chip movement in the drill ute. These forces include the force resulting from the chip generation, the friction force from the ute Ff and the friction force from the hole wall Fw. The force from chip generation helps the chip to move up along the drill ute and rotate by itself. This force also tends to unfold the chip and expand its curl radius, which in turn increases the friction forces of the chip with the ute and hole wall. At the same time, the friction force from the drill ute Ff prevents the chip from either moving upward or rotating by its own axis. The friction force from the hole wall Fw can be decomposed into forces parallel to the chip

Fig. 2. Force analysis of spiral chips.

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axis Fwf, which helps the chip move upward, and the force normal to the drill ute surface Ffn, which helps the chip to rotate. The force Ffn also tends to decrease the radius of spiral chips by twisting the chips, thus decreasing the chip friction forces with the ute and hole wall. Fig. 2 shows the relationship among chip forces, chip movement and drill ute geometry, where: u is drill rotation velocity, r is the drill radial vector at the drill margin, v cw is the absolute chip moving velocity relative to the workpiece, which can be obtained as r v cw Z u ! C v cf C v fd (1)

Since the chip deformation ratio, K, is usually larger than 1.5 [4] and the pitch of spiral chips is usuall smaller compared with chip diameter, vcf will be much slower than the speed of drill margin ru. This slow chip moving speed causes the angle f to be small in spiral chip formation. Drills with a small helix angle will have more friction force for chip rotation, while drills with large helix angle will have more friction force for chip moving up.

4. Chip moving forces for string chips The effect of active forces Fwf and Fwn is determined by the ute helix angle and chip moving speed vcf. When ute helix angle is constant, the increase of chip speed vcf will decrease Fwf and increase Fwn. In spiral ejection, because vcf is small, for most cases Fwf can help the chip moving upwards. However, in string chip removal process, because chips unwind, the chip speed vcf is much faster than that of spiral chips. The speed vcf of string chips approximated by the chip forming speed at the outer corner of the cutting edge, vcf Z ru K (7)

v fd v cf b f g Fw

is the drill feed velocity, is the chip moving velocity relative to drill ute, is the ute helix angle, r is the angle between vectors of u ! K v fd and v cw , r r is the angle between vector u ! and u ! K v fd , is the vector of friction force of chips with the hole wall.

Thus, the portion of F w that is normal to drill ute Fwn and the portion that is parallel to the drill ute Fwf can be expressed as: Fwn Z Fw cosb C g K 4 Fwf Z Fw sinb C g K 4 (2) (3)

From Eqs. (2) and (3), it can be found that the friction forces are determined by the angle bCgZf, in which g can be calculated from v (4) tan g Z fd ur and f can be obtained by analyzing the triangle formed by r the vectors v cw , v cf and u ! K v fd , which yields p v vcw vfd C ru2 Z cf Z (5) sin908 C b C g K 4 sin 4 sin908 K b K g It shows that angle f is determined by the speed that chips move along the drill ute. With the same drill rotation speed, angle f decreases as vcf increases, resulting in the decrease of ejection force Fwf. Based on the shape of spiral chip, when each chip length pDchip is generated by the drill outer corner, the chip will move up along the drill ute by p, thus vcf can be approximated as vcf Z where Dchip Maximum diameter of spiral chips p Pitch of the spiral chip K Chip deformation ratio, which is dened as: KZ(tc/td) ru p KpDchip (6)

For most drilling cases, the large value of vcf makes the force Fwf negative, which implies that if chips contact the hole wall, the friction force will impede the string chips from owing out. Fig. 3 shows a string chip moving in the drill ute. The gure reveals that because of the internal stress of string chip, the chips cluster to the center of the drill without contacting the hole wall. In this situation, the major forces in the string chip removal process are the pushing force resulting from chip generation and the resistant force from the drill ute. These forces increase, as the drilled hole gets deeper. When pushing force reaches a critical value, the chip will buckle and break. Without the pushing forces from succeeding chips, broken string chips will easily block the drill ute. Therefore, the ability to remove string chips relates to the string chip anti-buckle capability. The chip anti-buckle capability is determined by the chip thickness and the ute cross-section area. When chips are thick and ute space is small, chip buckling can be reduced.

Fig. 3. String chips in a ute.

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5. Inuence of drill geometry on spiral chip formation Spiral chips are structurally determined to rotate on their own axis while moving upwards. This motion is only free when the drilled hole is shallow. As drilling progresses, chips come in contact with the drill ute and hole wall and more friction force will prevent the chip from moving. This is the case especially when a chip is bent by the drill ute. When the impediment forces reach a critical value, the chip will stop spinning and break. Thus, spiral chip length depends on the smoothness of chip movement in the ute. The more freely the chip can move, the longer the chip will be. The smoothness of chip movement is inuenced by the drill point angle, ute helix angle and ute size. Fig. 4 shows the initial state when a spiral chip is formed on the cutting edge. This gure shows that there exists a chip natural exit angle q, which represents the initial orientation of the spiral chip. This natural exit angle q is related to the drill point angle rp. As the drill point angle, rp, increases, q increases as well. However, the actual chip orientation within the ute is constrained by the drill ute angle b. Thus, if qZb, chips will be free during the process of entering the drill ute from the cutting edge. If qsb, chips will be bent when entering the drill ute, causing more impeding friction forces. The severity of the bending effect can be measured by comparing the difference of the chip natural ow angle and drill helix angle jqKbj. From Fig. 4, the chip natural ow angle q can be obtained from qZ rp Kh 2 (8)

Also BC Z Dd r 2 sin 2p  h Z sinK1 where Dd drill diameter Wb web thickness  Z sinK1  Dd K Wb sin Dd
rp  2

(10)

Thus, AB BC (11)

6. Experimental verication for the spiral chip length Experiments were conducted to verify the assumptions that the length of spiral chips will be shorter when jqKbj becomes large since the interaction forces increase as the angle difference jqKbj increases. In the experiments, 6.35 mm HSS drills with 1.56 mm web thickness were used to drill the workpiece of AISI 1048. Fig. 5 shows the chip ow angle with different point angles based on Eq. (9). In order to create the angle difference of jqKbj, 6 drills with helix angles of 24, 30, 388 and point angles of 90, 1408 were tested. All these drills were tested at a rotational speed of 500 rpm and feed speed of 37 mm/min. The slow rotational speed was used to prevent the chips from breaking or elongating due to centrifugal force. After drilling each hole, the rst chips were collected. Each test was repeated three times and the average chip lengths (rst chip) were listed in Table 1. The experimental results show that as the difference of jqKbj increases, the length of the spiral chip decreases. The correlation of the angle difference jqKbj and the rst chip length from this experiment is K0.93.

where rp is the drill point angle and h can be calculated from Fig. 4 as follows. Since the spiral chip diameter is usually the size of drill ute. AB Z Dd K Wb 2 (9)

7. Inuence of drill geometry on string chip formation Spiral chip length modeling was based on the difference between the natural ow angle and the actual chip ow
60 Chip Flow Angle (Deg.) 50 40 30 20 80 100 120 Point Angle (Deg.) 140 160

Fig. 4. Chip natural ow angle of spiral chips.

Fig. 5. Spiral chip natural chip ow angle.

F. Ke et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 16521658 Table 1 Experimental results of spiral chip formation Drill No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 rp 908 908 908 1408 1408 1408 b 248 308 388 248 308 388 q 28.58 28.58 28.58 488 488 488 jqKbj 4.58 1.58 9.58 248 188 108 Chip length (mm) 82 103 52 33 51 65 Table 2 Experimental results of string chip formation No. j q qKj

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Average chip length (mm) 7090 1020 2535

1 2 3

bZ398 rZ1408 bZ398 rZ908 bZ158 rZ1408

13.78 13.78 4.68

208 458 208

6.38 31.38 15.48

angle (ute helix angle). The same concept will be applied to string chip length modeling. The difference between string chip modeling and spiral chip modeling is the denition of the natural exit angle. In spiral chip formation, a natural ow angle exists when the chip formed freely. However, because string chips are not a natural form, the natural ow angle does not exist during string chip formation. Fig. 6 shows that string chips tend to ow to the drill center when the drill point angle is small. In this model, the direction perpendicular to the drill cutting edge is assumed to be the string chip natural ow direction. The angle between the chip natural ow direction and the drill axis is called the string chip natural ow angle q which is equal to 908-(rp/2). The actual chip ow angle is determined by the drill ute which is independent of drill point angle. Since string chips cluster around the center of the drill, the helix angle of the ute surface near the drill center is approximated as the chip ow angle angle j, which can be derived as follows. Since the pitch of the ute is pDdrill tan b

pZ

Wb p tan j

(13)

Sustituting Eqs. (12)(13), the helix angle of the ute near the drill center can be obtained. j Z tanK1 Wb tan b pDdrill (14)

8. Experimental verication of string chip length In order to compare the effect of different qKj, three drills were used in tests. As listed in Table 2, drills 1 and 2 have the same helix angles, 398, and different point angles. Drills 1 and 3 have the same point angles but different helix angles. All of the drills are 6.35 mm HSS with web thickness of 1.56 mm. In the three tests, the workpiece (AISI 1040) was drilled to the depth of 35 mm with rotation speed of 1000 rpm and feed speed of 75 mm/min. Each test was repeated three times. The chips from each drill were collected and the average chip lengthes were listed in Table 2. As can be seen, string chips become longer as the angle difference of qKj decreases.

pZ

(12)

The pitch of the ute near the drill center is the same as that of the rest of ute, thus

9. Summary This paper examined the chip formation mechanisms of spiral chips and string chips. In this study, the interactions from drill ute and workpiece on chip forming and evacuation were analyzed. Also, this study proposed chip length models for both spiral chips and string chips based on the difference between the natural chip exit angle and the actual chip exit angle. Based on these models the chip forming smoothness can be revealed and the average chip length can be predicted qualitatively.

References
[1] A.R. Watson, Drilling model for cutting lip and chisel edge and comparison of experimental and predicted resultsI. Initial chip lip model, Int. J. Mach. Tool Des. Res. 25 (4) (1985) 347365. [2] C.H. Kahng, W.C. Koegler, A study of chip breaking during twist drilling, SME Trans. NAMRC 1977; 611. [3] K. Sakaurai, K. Adachi, S. Hanasaki, Breaking mechanism of chips in intermittently decelerated feed drilling of aluminum alloys, J. Jpn Inst. Light Metals 48 (4) (1998) 195198.

Fig. 6. Chip natural ow angle of string chips.

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F. Ke et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 16521658 [6] I.S. Jawahir, C.A. Luttervelt, Recent developments in chip control research and applications, Ann. CIRP 42 (1993) 659693. [7] R.M.D. Mesquita, F.A.M. Soares, M.J.M. Marques, Barata, An experimental study of the effect of cutting speed on chip breaking, J. Mater. Proc. Tech. 56 (1996) 313320. [8] K. Nakayama, Chip form geometry, J. Jpn Soc. Precision Eng. 38 (7) (1972) 3440. [9] K.H.W. Seah, M. Rahman, X.P. Li, X.D. Zhang, A three-dimensional model of chip ow, chip curl and chip breaking for oblique cutting, Int. J. Mach. Tools Manufact. 36 (12) (1996) 13851400.

[4] P.L.B. Oxley, The mechanics of machining: an analytical approach to assessing machinability, Halsted Press, E. Horwood, New York, 1989 (Chichester [England]).

Further Reading
[5] N.H. Cook, P. Jhaveri, N. Nayak, The Mechanism of chip curl and its importance in metal cutting, Trans. ASME, J. Eng. Indus. 1963; 374380.