Profile milling of titanium combines the problems of a relatively new manufacturing process with those of machining a new material. Titanium is not difficult to machine as compared to steel of equivalent strength; however, it must be properly processed or higher cutter costs and low production output will result. The process of profile milling can be greatly improved through the use of adaptive control. Two elements of the numerical control machining process, the part programmer and the machine operator, are sources of considerable process variability. Consequently, in the foreseeable future adaptive control concepts will be applied to the process to improve efficiency by reducing this “people” influence on machine output.
