Tool wear in titanium machining

Sammanfattning: The present work was performed at AB Sandvik Coromant as a part in improving the knowledge and understanding about wear of uncoated WC/Co cutting tools during turning of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V. When machining titanium alloys, or any other material, wear of the cutting tools has a huge impact on the ability to shape the material as well as the manufacturing cost of the finished product. Due to the low thermal conductivity of titanium, high cutting temperatures will occur in narrow regions near the cutting edge during machining. This will result in high reaction and diffusion rates, resulting in high cutting tool wear rates. To be able to improve titanium machining, better knowledge and understanding about wear during these tough conditions are needed. Wear tests were performed during orthogonal turning of titanium alloy and the cutting tool inserts were analysed by SEM, EDS and optical imaging in Alicona InfiniteFocus. Simulations in AdvantEdge provided calculated values for cutting temperatures, cutting forces and contact stresses for the same conditions as used during wear tests. It was found that turning titanium alloy with WC/Co cutting tools at cutting speeds 30-60 m/min causes chamfering of the cutting tool edge and adhesion of a build-up layer (BUL) of workpiece material on top of the rake face wear land. The wear rate for these low cutting speeds was found to be almost unchanging during cutting times up to 3 minutes. During cutting speeds of 90-115 m/min, crater wear was found to be the dominating wear mechanism and the wear rate was found to have a linear dependence of cutting speed. An Arrhenius-type temperature dependent wear mechanism was found for high cutting speeds, between 90 and 115 m/min.