Chapter(2)

Materials And Geometry Of Cutting Tools

Introduction
About 1900,cutting tools made of plain carbon steel
Taylor discovered the use of high-speed steel as a tool material
. Its higher hot hardness and improved wear resistance made it
possible to machine materials at much higher cutting speeds.
Another important development occurred in 1926 when
sintered tungsten carbide tools were manufactured using the
powder metallurgy technique.
 Diamond bounded to a carbide base has been used as a tool
material.
Figure(2.1) shows that a turning job which took 100 minutes in
1900, now takes a fraction of a minute because of developments
in tool materials.

Fig.(2.1): Trend in Time of Turning a Work Piece over Last Hundred Years
 Desirable Properties Of Tool Materials
The three most important desirable properties of a tool
materials are wear resistance, hot hardness and toughness.

Wear Resistance
 Wear of tools is caused by abrasion, adhesion and
diffusion. Abrasive action is because of the flow of chip
over the rake face under intense pressure, and the rubbing
action of the machined surface with the tool flank.
 Adhesion refers to gradual loss of tool material when its
particles adhere to the chip or the machined surface and
get torn away.
 Wear Resistance
 Diffusion wear is due to transfer of atoms of hard alloy
constituents of tool material into work or chip material,
resulting in the weakening of the tool.
 Wear resistance is the ability of the tool material to retain
its sharpness and shape for sufficiently long time while
machining a given work material at a given cutting speed.
Hot Hardness
 Hot hardness is a measure of the ability of a tool material to
retain its hardness even at elevated temperatures. The higher is
the cutting speed, the higher is temperature and productivity.
 A tool should fully recover its hardness after a machining pass.

Toughness
 Toughness is the ability of a material to absorb
deformation energy before fracture. The tougher the
material, the abler it is to withstand impact loads and
intermittent cuts.
 Characteristics of cutting tools materials
The properties of the generally used cutting tool materials,
namely :
 High carbon steel
 High speed steel
 Coated high speed steel tools
 Cast alloy
 Sintered carbides
 Ceramic
 Kyon
 Sialon
 Boron nitride
 Diamond
High Carbon Steel
 High carbon tool steels are usually plain carbon steels
containing 0.6 to 1.5% carbon. Small percentages of
silicon, manganese, chromium and vanadium are used to
help refine grain size and increase tool hardness.
 Carbon steel tools are easy to manufacture and their
cutting edge can be easily sharpened.
 Their chief drawback is their low wear resistance and low
hot hardness.
 Carbon steel is also widely used in the manufacture of
hand tools like taps, files, reamers and hacksaw blades
and chisels.
 High Speed Steel(HSS)
 High-Speed Steel is an alloy steel to which alloying
elements like tungsten, chromium, vanadium,
molybdenum and cobalt besides the desired percent of
carbon have been added in order to increase its hot
hardness and wear resistance
 There are two types of HSS
 T-Type in which tungsten is major alloying element (12-
18%)
 M-Type in which molybdenum is the major alloying
element(8-12%)
 HSS is widely used for making drills and reamers, milling
cutters, turning tools, taps, dies, bronches, hobs, for
machining the softer non-ferrous materials.
 Coated High Speed Steel Tools
 A recent development is that of coating HSS cutting tools
with thin layers(2 to 6 μm thick) of a refractory metal
carbide or nitride eg. Titanium carbide, titanium nitride,
hafnium nitride and alumina.
 The two methods of coating used are (1) physical vapor
deposition (PVD) (2) chemical vapor deposition (CVD).
Cast Alloys
 These cast-able non-ferrous alloys contain primarily
cobalt(40-55%),chromium(25 to 35 %),tungsten (1.5-3
%) and carbon (0 to 5%).
 Cobalt acts a solvent matrix with chromium as the major
alloying element.
 Tungsten provides hardness to the material.
Cemented Carbides
 Cemented carbides are classified into two main types,
namely straight tungsten carbides and alloyed tungsten
carbides.
 The two main constituents of straight tungsten carbides
are finely powered tungsten carbide (85-95%) and cobalt
(5-15%) which acts as a bonding medium.
 Cemented carbides represented a big breakthrough in tool
materials.
 Because of their ability to retain high hardness even at
temperatures of the order of 1000’C,they can be operated
at much higher cutting speeds as compared to HSS.
 Cemented carbides are used in the form of small tips or
inserts, which are brazed or clamped to steel shanks.
Ceramics(Cemented Oxides)
 Ceramic tools are also produced by a sintering process.
 The main constituent is aluminum oxide.
 Up to 10% additions of oxides of magnesium, titanium
and chromium, are often made to obtain superior
properties.
 Ceramic tool tips are highly brittle.
 Ceramic tools retain their hardness up to 1400’C
 They have better resistance to abrasion wear and crater
formation than cemented carbides.
KYON
 Kyon inserts are a recent development in tool materials.
 Kyon is ceramic tool with alumina base and reinforced by
silicon carbide whiskers.
 Each whisker is a single elongated crystal of silicon
carbide.
 The structure which consists of SiC fibres in ceramics
matrix is very tough and wear resistant.
Boron Nitride
 Boron nitride in the cubic structure is known to be the
hardest material next only to diamond.
 Boron nitride is polymorphic in nature and can occur in
three structural forms, namely hexagonal graphite-like
structure.
 Cubic boron nitride (CBN) is used extensively as an
abrasive in grinding wheels for the fine finishing of HSS
tools, hard or high-strength alloy steels and stainless steels.
 Tools tips or inserts made from cubic boron nitride are
capable of machining hardened tool steels, chilled cast-
iron, high-strength and heat-resistant alloys.
Diamond
 Diamond is used as a cutting tool material, in the form of
either a single crystal or a polycrystalline compact.
 Polycrystalline diamond is produced by sintering very
fine powder of diamond at high temperature and pressure.
 The distinguishing feature of diamond tools is their
hardness, which is greater than that of any other material.
 Because diamond tools are extremely brittle, it is
necessary that the machine tool, the tool holder and the
clamping of diamond to the tool shank must be rigid. The
cutting operation should have minimum vibrations.
Cutting Tool Geometry
Fig(2.5): American System of Specifying Tool Angles
Chip Flow Direction
Tool Angle Specification Systems

British System of Specifying Tool Angles