INFLUENCE OF EDGE TREATMENT BY POLISHING WITH ABRASIVE BRUSH BRUSHES ON THE LIFE OF THE TOOL FOR THE MILLING PROCESS

Abstract

Machining is a process in constant evolution, the search for greater productivity, reliability, and quality of machined materials is fundamental for the constant evolution of the process. The condition of the tool edge is of great importance for the tool performance in machining, the edge of a tool after the manufacturing or re-sharpening process has defects such as: microcracks, irregularities, and an extremely sharp edge. The cutting edge treatment is used to remove these defects, which originate from the tool manufacturing and re-sharpening processes. In view of these listed points, this work aims to understand and evaluate the effects of cutting edge treatment by abrasive bristle brushes, taking into account the evolution of wear on the edge and tool life in the end milling process. The abrasive brushes covered in this work are technical brushes from the 3M brand, these brushes have different grain sizes and two different abrasives, silicon carbide (SiC) and aluminum oxide (Al2O3), their bristles are made of nylon of two different thicknesses. Based on the literature and to evaluate the performance of these brushes, points such as roughness and edge contour were addressed in this step, and as a result, the fine bristle brush with a SiC particle size of 1 micron had the best performance, these brushes produced a radius of 0.06 mm on the tool edges. The polishing process treated two tools, these tools went through the milling process in AISI P20 steel. As a result, the treated tools had a superior performance by 15,30% compared to untreated tools. In addition to increasing the useful life, the cutting edge treatment provided linear flank wear, delaying the presence of wear such as adhesion, microcracks, and microchips. The polishing edge treatment with abrasive bristle brushes proves to be an effective and reliable process for improving the performance of machining tools.