Tailored Chip Breaker Development for Polycrystalline Diamond Inserts: FEM-Based Design and Validation

Abstract

Chip evacuation is a critical issue in metal cutting, especially continuous chips that are generated during the machining of ductile materials. The improper evacuation of these kinds of chips can cause scratching of the machined surface of the workpiece and worsen the resultant surface quality. This scenario can be avoided by using a properly designed chip breaker. Despite their relevance, chip breakers are not in wide-spread use in polycrystalline diamond (PCD) cutting tools. This paper presents a systematic methodology to design chip breakers for PCD turning inserts through finite element modelling. The goal is to evacuate the formed chips from the cutting zone controllably and thus, maintain surface quality. Particularly, different scenarios of the chip formation process and chip curling/evacuation were simulated for different tool designs. Then, the chip breaker was produced by laser ablation. Finally, experimental validation tests were conducted to confirm the ability of this chip breaker to evacuate the chips effectively. The machining results revealed superior performance of the insert with chip breaker in terms of the ability to produce curly chips and high surface quality (Ra = 0.51–0.56 µm) when compared with the insert without chip breaker that produced continuous chips and higher surface roughness (Ra = 0.74–1.61 µm).

On the Assessment of Surface Quality and Productivity Aspects in Precision Hard Turning of AISI 4340 Steel Alloy: Relative Performance of Wiper vs. Conventional Inserts

“…However, grinding had a low throughput and limited capabilities in terms of flexibility and the geometries to be machined [12]. A cost-effective alternative for materials with high hardness was shown to be precision hard turning, which has the added advantage of a relatively high throughput with a reduction in processing time up to 60%, when compared with grinding [13]. This is due mainly to its ability to precisely machine components to produce complex geometries with tight tolerances and higher surface quality and material removal rate (MRR) [14].…”

Principles and Characteristics of Different EDM Processes in Machining Tool and Die Steels

“…In addition to unique characteristics, most modern materials need special manufacturing processes to enable them to be machined with ease [1,2]. Most of these materials are usually difficult to cut by conventional manufacturing processes [3][4][5][6][7]. The unique characteristics of these hard-to-cut materials increase their applications, which further drive manufacturers to explore new machining processes with reasonable cost and high precision [8,9].…”

Towards an Adaptive Design of Quality, Productivity and Economic Aspects When Machining AISI 4340 Steel With Wiper Inserts

“…Tooling, as an essential aspect of metal cutting, has been a topic of interest when it comes to these solutions. This led to proposing a variety of ideas in the literature, such as tool coating [3,4], tool texturing [5,6], and coming up with new tool materials, designs, and geometries [7,8]. Besides, new cooling strategies have been applied, such as MQL [9,10] and cryogenic cooling [11,12].…”