An investigation on heat transport capability of an axial rotating heating pipe abrasive-milling tool for profile dry abrasive milling

An axial rotating heating pipe abrasive-milling tool (RHPAMT) was designed to be applied in the profile abrasive-milling. Preliminary simulation researches have been performed to indicate that nucleate boiling occurred in the heat pipe. Results showed that a filling ratio of 32% would contribute to a better heat transfer performance for the RHPAMT. Experiments were also carried out by dry abrasive-milling of Ti-6Al-4V under different filling ratios and milling parameters. The results indicated that an optimal thermal performance could be obtained for RHPAMT with a filling ratio of 32%, a feed rate of 63 mm/min and a cutting depth of 0.05 mm. The temperature on the inner wall of the evaporator could be controlled under 30 °C while the heat pipe can start within 15 s. Compared with the milling process without heat pipe, the temperature of the workpiece could be lowered by 45% and the maximum temperature difference of the profile surface was within 10 °C, which indicated that this tool has an obvious effect on uniformly controlling the temperature of contact region.