Investigations of Tool Wear Mechanisms in the Turning of Conventional, Calcium Treated and Ultraclean Steels

Sammanfattning: Application of clean and ultraclean steels have shown to provide favourable mechanical properties for bearings and transmission components, specifically regarding fatigue performance, compared to conventional steel grades. Clean steels are characterized by containing a very low level of non-metallic inclusions. While this characteristic is beneficial for the fatigue strength, inclusions in steels have shown to be favorable for the machinability and therefore challenges during machining of clean steels can arise. In this thesis the machinability and tool wear mechanisms of ultraclean steel have been evaluated during longitudinal turning. The aim of the study was to determine how steel cleanness and inclusions impact different machinability aspects. This was achieved by performing a comparative study of three steel grades with different level of cleanness and inclusions characteristics. Four machining experiments were executed investigating the chip breakability, cutting force, tool life and cutting tool coating degradation. The machined inserts were then analysed using light optical microscopy, secondary electron microscopy and electron probe microanalysis. The result revealed that the ultraclean steel grade has the overall worst machinability with the lowest chip breakability, highest cutting forces, and lowest tool life for the investigated steels. Additionally, it was found that the inserts that machined the ultraclean steel and the calcium treated steel was exposed to severe crater wear. However, the coating degradation causing the crater wear differs between the two grades. For the ultraclean steel the wear rate of the entire chemical vapor deposition coating is high. In contrast, for the calcium treated steel only the top alumina layer degrades rapidly and the underlying titanium carbonitride layer have a low wear rate.