Abstract The widespread use of CFRP components in the aerospace industry has led to a significant increase in the demand for assembly holes, for which drilling remains the primary machining method. To effectively mitigate drilling-induced damage, this study simplifies the CFRP drilling process as oblique cutting and develops a temperature-dependent, three-dimensional microscale oblique cutting model based on the Johnson–Cook constitutive law, which is validated using experimental data. The analy