Micromilling force prediction through Digital Twins

The digital twin concept is defined and applied to the case of force prediction in micromilling where it could have a strong impact as experimental and analytical approaches are complicated by the intrinsic physical pehnomena taking place in micro chip removal processes. A first assessment is presented in this paper regarding the capability of a commercial software (VERICUT®) to simulate not only the CNC machines in terms of geometry, kinematics and control, but also the milling force. Typical micromilling conditions have been experimentally tested and compared with the corresponding simulated conditions in terms of force components in the time domain. Results point out how the prediction performance is not acceptable where micro chip removal phenomena as minimum chip thickness take place, but promising improvements are foreseen in case of the implementation of micromilling specific models in the software.