OPTIMIZATION OF CUTTING PARAMETERS AND MACHINING DISTORTION ANALYSIS FOR AA2050

High strength and low density requirement is the fundamental issue in aerospace industry. Many new engineering materials have been focused in recent years. After the 2^ndWorld War, aluminum alloy (AA) 2050, (AA2050), which have low density, high fatigue resistance and excellent corrosion resistance, have become the focus of attention with their lighter weight, although they show high performance based on strength values as other using aluminum alloys in aerospace structural parts such as heavy plate applications, fuselage frames, wing skins and bulkheads. In addition to the strength values of materials used, when they show during machining, the reactions can change the desired strength values and geometrical dimensions. In this study feed rates, spindle speed, and radial depth of cut which directly affect the machining distortion, were optimized with the usage of the Box-Behnken experimental design method for AA2050. Based on the optimum cutting parameters obtained from the experimental design studies, materials were machined in a milling center with using a carbide end mill which have 20 mm diameter and 0.5 mm tip radius. Depending on the optimum parameters, cutting speed, material removal rate, and spending time are calculated for mass production terminology. Also, with the optimum parameters, on the machined part; geometric dimensioning and tolerance data such as perpendicularity, parallelism and flatness were examined, the distortion values on the workpiece were obtained. Based on the distortion analysis, a significant improvement has been achieved on the workpiece by optimization of cutting parameters.