Abstract
In modern manufacturing, many products that have geometrically complicated features, including three-dimensional sculptured surfaces, are being designed and produced to meet various sophisticated functional specifications. The cutting force is required not only for the design of machine and cutting tools, but also for the determination of the cutting conditions for the various machining operations. The ball-end mill is deflected by the cutting force and, the tool deflection is one of the main reasons of the machining errors on a free-form surface. Hence, The cutting force generated in the ball-end milling is the most important property of the machining. The purpose of this study is to find the characteristics of the cutting force in inclined plane and the resultant machining errors in the ball-end milling process. Although the depth of cut is constant in the inclined plane, the cutting force area varies due to the hemisphere of the ball-end mill.