Tool wear, surface roughness, cutting temperature and chips morphology evaluation of Al/TiN coated carbide cutting tools in milling of Cu–B–CrC based ceramic matrix composites

Abstract

Ceramics-based composites are a special class of materials carrying combined properties that belongs to alloys and metals according to market demands. This makes composites completely different and paves the way for new applications that requires the utmost properties. Machining of such composites is of great importance to finalize the fabrication process with improved part quality; however, the process implies several challenges due to the complexity of the cutting processes and random material structure. The current study aims to examine the machinability characteristics when milling novel material, Cu–B–CrC composites using Al/TiN coated carbide tools. Further, the influence of machining parameters along with the different weight ratios of the powders amounts used to fabricate the machined reinforced samples on output parameters namely surface roughness, tool wear, chip morphology and cutting temperatures was investigated. One of the key findings of the study is the dominant effect of reinforcement ratio (Cu, B, CrC) on machinability, which showed that 5% additive (2% B, 3% CrC) provides improved properties such as surface roughness, tool wear and cutting temperature. Cutting speed alterations play an important role in the machinability characteristics, i.e., increasing value increases flank wear and cutting temperatures and reduces surface roughness. Increasing feed rate increases the surface roughness meanwhile its effect shows changing behavior on the flank wear and cutting temperatures according to cutting speed and reinforcement ratio.