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For repairing turbine blades or die and mold forms, additive manufacturing processes are commonly used to build-up new material to damaged sections. Afterwards, a subsequent re-contouring process such as 5-axis ball end milling is required to remove the excess material restoring the often complex original geometries. The process design of the re-contouring operation has to be done virtually, because the individuality of the repair cases prevents actual running-in processes. Hard-to-cut materials e.g. titanium or nickel alloys, parts prone to vibration and long tool holders complicate the repair even further. Thus, a fast and flexible material removal simulation is needed. The simulation has to predict suitable processes focusing shape deviations under consideration of process stability for arbitrary complex engagement conditions. In this paper, a dynamic multi-dexel based material removal simulation is presented, which is able to predict high-resolution surface topography and stable parameters for arbitrary processes such as 5-axis ball end milling. In contrast to other works, the simulation is able to simulate an unstable process using discrete cutting edges in real-time. © 2020, The Author(s).

In this paper, a new tool concept suitable for simultaneous roughing and finishing operations is presented. The developed end mill has two radial recessed roughing teeth with a flank face chamfer and two sharp finishing teeth. While the chamfered cutting edges ensure a high process stability due to process damping, the sharp cutting edges generate the final surface. In order to investigate the roughing and finishing capabilities, the tool was compared with a roughing tool with chamfered teeth only and a finishing tool with sharp teeth only. With all three tool concepts milling experiments were carried out, in which forces, process stability and surface quality were analyzed. The generated surface quality for the new tool concept could be significantly improved compared to the roughing tool. However, the aimed surface quality of the finishing tool with sharp edges could not be achieved. Moreover, experimental results show that the process stability of the new tool concept is significantly higher than the process stability of the finishing tool.