The present machine tools are designed very conservatively to have linear characteristics and to work in a stable region. During finite amplitude instability, metal cutting operations have nonlinear characteristics and vibration stays within certain limits. In this paper, the chaotic nature of finite amplitude instability is studied on simulated and experimental turning signals. Lyapunov exponents and Poincare maps of the signals were calculated to investigate the chaotic nature of the systems. The results of this study agreed with all the previous cutting simulation and experimental studies. In the future, the chaotic nature of metal cutting can be used effectively to design new machine tools to obtain very large metal removal rates.
