Specific cutting coefficients for the most common engineered wood products

Abstract

The aim of the present work is to investigate the specific cutting coefficients for the assessment of cutting forces when peripheral milling different types of engineered wood products (EWPs). The approach comes from previous work aiming to investigate the specific cutting coefficients when cutting solid wood with different grain orientations. The model inputs are the uncut chip thickness and width, the machining configuration i.e. up- or down-milling, the type of EWP, and the tool helix angle. Thereby, different EWPs were round shaped (peripheral milling) machined after being fixed on a dynamometric platform in order to measure the cutting forces when up- or down-milling with different chip thicknesses and tool helical angles. The acquired forces were analysed and plotted against the respective chip thicknesses to calculate the specific cutting coefficients as well as the intercepts to serve as input to the model. The EWPs assessed were: particleboard, MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard), OSB (Oriented Strand Board), and plywood. While particleboard and MDF has shown a perfectly isotropic behaviour, plywood has shown to be moderately directional. OSB has exhibited very large and unpredictable variations associated to its very heterogeneous structure that makes the cutting forces of this material very difficult to be effectively modelled.