High-speed machining

High-speed machining (HSM) is often presented as the "fruit" of a marvellous discovery: if you increase cutting speeds beyond the usual limits, you first pass through a zone of unusable speeds, poetically dubbed the "valley of death". Then you enter a machinist's paradise: specific cutting forces and energies are reduced, surface finishes become excellent, and tool life increases to far exceed that obtained with conventional machining.

In this article, we show that high-speed machining is not a matter of deciding to break a cutting speed barrier: it's a matter of rationally implementing, at the highest level of economic performance, all the elements involved in defining the machining operation concerned, and not just the cutting parameters.

We will also show that the problems posed by HSM, and their solutions, vary according to the machining techniques and materials involved.

This section deals with machining operations using tools with defined geometries, which excludes machining using high-speed grinding, a technique that requires a separate study.