ONLINE ISSN 2069-7430 ISSN-L 1841-4737 PRO LIGNO Vol. 9 N° 4 2013 www.proligno.ro pp. 398-407 398 ASSESSMENT OF MACHINING PERFORMANCE FOR SOLID WOOD MOULDING. ADVANCES ON TRIALS RUNNING WITH SHARP CUTTING EDGE Alfredo AGUILERA University Austral of Chile – Wood Science Institute Address: Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile E-mail: aguilera@uach.cl José Luis BARROS University Austral of Chile – Acoustic Institute Address: Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile E-mail: jbarros@uach.cl Aldo ROLLERI University Austral of Chile – Wood Science Institute Address: Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile E-mail: arolleri@uach.cl Jorge CÁRDENAS University Austral of Chile – Acoustic Institute Address: Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile E-mail: jcardenas@uach.cl Pierre Jean MÉAUSOONE Lorraine University – École Nationale Supérieure des Technologies et Industries du Bois Address: 27 Rue Philippe Séguin, 88051 Épinal, France E-mail: pierre-jean.meausoone@enstib.uhp-nancy.fr Claudio AGUILAR Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María – Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Address: Avenida España 1680, Valparaíso, Chile E-mail: claudio.aguilar@usm.cl Abstract: The final quality of solid wood moulding depends on several factors, being the raw material one of the most important, but the choice of cutting conditions are a key point when processing this type of material. One of the main problems is to achieve an adequate monitoring of the cutting conditions in order to detect and correct in-time operational problems or prevent the loss of productivity due to an over chute in quality at a level that is below the required standards. The main objective of this research is to understand and limit the tool wear when appearance grade products are being produced, mainly to detect and prevent the loss of quality, but also the need to monitor the process considering different factors such as the cutting forces and the sound emitted during the process, then correlate them with surface roughness. The main findings of this study allow to conclude that the relationship between cutting speed and feed rate reflects well the changes in cutting forces, surface roughness and sound pressure. When the chip thickness increases it correlates very well with increasing cutting forces, as well as surface roughness (good levels of coefficients of determination were observed for both response parameters), rougher surfaces produced with thicker chip (higher feed rate); but it is believed that in the present state of tool wear, the results of cutting forces have not a fully appropriate behaviour; further studies are needed on this variable at different levels of wear. Also, the change of rake angle is clearly reflected on the surface roughness and sound pressure. The RMS sound pressure provides adequate results when the signals were processed using a digital high-pass filter with a cut-off frequency of 1000 Hz. Key words: radiata pine; rake angle; sound pressure; surface roughness; wood machining; solid moulding.