The market demand for machining and cutting of various plastics parts is in continuous
increase. The aim of this study is to extract prediction laws for surface roughness,
cutting forces and temperatures evolution during the machining of two polyethylene pipes
grades (HDPE-100) and (HDPE-80). It was found that feed rate is the most prevailing factor
on roughness criteria and that better surfaces are obtained during the machining of the
harder HDPE-80 resin. Also, cutting speed improved surface quality for speeds up to 200
m.min-1 but the rising interface temperature caused surface damage and
material rapid softening. Also, feed exponents, in mathematical models, were found to be 3
to 4 times higher than those of cutting speed and depth of cut. An increase in the cutting
speed led to a gradual reduction for the 3 cutting forces components (Fr,
Fa and Fv) with a dominance of the tangential force
(Fv). As expected, the value of the depth of cut had a large influence
on the temperature within the cutting zone. This temperature is slightly higher during the
machining of HDPE-80 compared to that of HDPE-100 most probably because of hardness
differences. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to check the adequacy of the
mathematical models relating cutting parameters with roughness, cutting forces and global
cutting zone temperature.