In machining parameters optimization of a chatter-free milling process, the inevitable surface location error (SLE) reflecting the machined workpiece dimension accuracy has been barely considered as one objective representing the machining quality, lowering the optimization accuracy. Therefore, this paper provides an approach to establish a multi-objective optimization model, where the material removal rate (MRR) represents the machining efficiency and the SLE predicted in time-domain represents the machining quality. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) method is used to solve the multi-objective model and provide pareto optimal solutions to first determine some ideal optimal solutions. Then the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and grey target decision (GTD) methods are combined to select one most satisfactory optimal solution which has a well balance between the MRR and SLE. A multi-objective model was established and taken as a case study to maximize the MRR and minimize the SLE. Comparison study was performed on this multi-objective model and two other mono-objective models for obtaining the optimal MRR and SLE respectively, which was combined with the influences of machining parameters on SLE to show the necessity of conducting a multi-objective optimization. Milling tests were conducted based on the solved optimal machining parameters, and the well consistence between the measured and predicted SLEs shows that the proposed multi-objective optimization method can provide an effective approach to balance the machining efficiency and quality when there are conflicts between different objectives.
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