Effect of discrete and continuous texture geometries on tool wear and derivative cutting effect during the machining

Abstract

In modern times, one of the efficient methods for lowering the amount of friction experienced at the tool-chip contact has been the fabrication of textures on the rake face of the tool. In this regard, the textured tools have been fabricated with various geometric texture shapes on tungsten carbide. The textures on the rake face of the tool have been fabricated by using various geometries such as discrete (dimple and hexagonal), continuous (sine wave), and a combination of discrete and continuous textures (mixed). Along with the textured shapes, the effect of variation in texture feature dimension (width or diameter- 40 μm, 80 μm, and 120 μm) on machining output has also been investigated. The developed tool has been employed for the machining of PH 13-8 Mo SS alloy to investigate the wear performance and derivative cutting phenomena. Upon investigation, it has been found that the combination of discrete and continuous textures i.e. mixed textured tool resulted in superior performance in terms of reduction of rake and flank wear. The experimental evidence demonstrates that a variation in the feature dimension of the texture has been a critical factor in the analysis of the derivative cutting phenomenon and the formation of build-up edge. It has been seen that machining operations performed at low speed with a discrete textured (hexagonal) tool having a feature dimension (width/diameter) of 40 μm have reduced the main cutting force up to 12 % as compared with the plain tool. In addition, reductions of 21.4 % and 24.8 %, respectively, have been reported while utilizing a tool with a sine wave texture and mixed texture tool with the same feature dimension.