Investigation of the parameters influencing pulsed laser assisted turning of DIN. 1.2379 tool steel

Abstract

Hard steels are extensively used in gamut of uses such as aerospace,vehicles and die and mold industries. These materials have high strengthand hard- ness which leads to a difficulty in their manufacturing. Inaddition to the required high forces during the production by machiningand the resulting tool wear, it needs machine tools with high stiffness.Such characteristics will result in a production cost that can reachhalf of the product cost and high investments in addition to the needfor subsequent finishing operations. Laser assisted machining (LAM)represents a new step towards a promising technique for machiningnew materials that are difficult to machine. It offers local heating of thework before conventional cutting takes place. Tool steel is an importantexample of these materials. In this work laser assisted turning of toolsteel DIN 1.2379 is investigated. Nd:YAG pulsed laser head of 350W power is used to assist conventional turning operation. For processevaluation, a comparison of conventional and LAM was introducedconsidering tool life, cutting forces. The influences of different cuttingspeeds, depth of cuts and laser powers were discussed. The experimentalresults showed a considerable increase of tool life, a reduction in cuttingforces, when using LAM in turning operation.