Thermally assisted machining (TAM) is an effective method for difficult-to-cut materials, and works by locally preheating the workpiece using various heat sources, such as laser, induction, and plasma. Recently, many researchers have studied TAM because of its low manufacturing costs, high productivity, and quality of materials. Laser assisted machining (LAM) has been studied by many researchers, but studies on TAM using induction or plasma heat sources, which are much cheaper than lasers, have been carried out by only a few researchers. Lasers have an excellent preheating effect, but are expensive, and the temperature of the heated workpiece drops quickly. Here, multi heat sources were used to solve the shortage in supplied heat source with a single heat source. Induction was applied as an additional heat source. The purpose of this study is to analyze the thermal effect and temperature distribution of single heat source and multi heat sources, and compare the machining characteristics according to heat source types. In order to analyze the preheating effect according to the feed rate of the heat sources, a temperature measurement experiment using thermocouples was carried out, and the efficiency of the thermal effect using multi heat sources was verified. In addition, the effectiveness of the thermal analysis results was verified by comparison with the measured temperature distribution. The machining characteristics of Inconel 718 and Ti-6Al-4V with laser, induction, and laser-induction assisted milling (LIAMill) were analyzed, by cutting force and surface roughness.
Keywords: Electromagnetic-thermal coupled analysis; Laser-Induction assisted milling; Machining characteristics; Multi heat sources; Thermal effect.