Grinding performance oriented experimental evaluation on TiC-Steel cermet with vitrified bond cBN wheel

Abstract

TiC-Steel cermet is widely used in aerospace and mining machinery owing to its excellent performance. However, the high wear resistance and the heterogeneity make its machining a challenging task. To investigate the grinding performance of TiC-Steel cermet, vitrified bond cBN wheel was customized to conduct dry grinding experiments. Grinding force was measured using a Kistler dynamometer; surface topography and 3D surface roughness parameters were measured by laser microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Results indicate that plastic removal of steel phase, brittle fracture of ceramic phase, ceramic phase wear, ceramic phase debonding and microcracks are main removal modes of TiC-Steel cermet. 3D surface roughness parameters S a , S q , and S z consistently increase with increasing grinding depths from 25 μm to 125 μm and decrease with increasing spindle rotation speed. Effect of feed rate on the 3D surface roughness parameters is less than that of the grinding depth. The trend of the grinding force and surface topography is similar to that of 3D surface roughness parameters. Hence, the optimal processing parameters ( v w = 1–2 m/min, a p = 25 μm, n s = 5130 rpm) were used to obtain the best surface quality and the lowest grinding force (the minimum F N and F T of 9.2 N and 3.5 N, respectively). This study is devoted to broaden the research on the machinability of carbide-based cermets and promote utilization rate of cermets in industry.