Wear of High Speed Steel Bi-Metal Bandsaw Blade when Cutting AvestaPolarit 17-7 Stainless Steel in the As-Cast State

Abstract

This paper reports experimental data on the wear of high-speed steel bimetal bandsaw blades cutting austenitic 17-7 stainless steel bars. Several different methods of assessing the wear modes and mechanisms are evaluated; Cutting and thrust force components, Set width, Kerf width, “Out-of-square” cutting, Wear modes and mechanisms and Chip characteristics. The wear mode established in the current work when bandsawing austenitic stainless steel with a bimetal blade is flank and corner wear together with formation of a cutting edge radius. The cutting edge radius increases as the wear progresses, reaching 25-50 mm after 300 cut sections. The established wear mechanism for the initial stages of wear is mild adhesive wear of the flank surface together with built-up edge formation and break-down. As the wear reaches steady-state the mechanism is adhesive wear of the flank surface with tempering/softening of high-speed steel layers. When the wear reached the steady-state region the level of thrust and cutting force were equal and relatively high. The kerf width appears to be less than the total set width of the blade, meaning that there is compression of the set teeth as they pass through the kerf. There is segmented chip formation with an increasing amount of vibration as the teeth wear, probably due to the increasing size of cutting edge radius. This work should be of great interest to the tool designer and user associated with bandsaws.

Wear of the cutting edge in the bandsawing operation when cutting austenitic 17-7 stainless steel

“…The wear testing was carried out by using 1 bandsaw loop to cut sections of the work-piece, as previously reported in [1]. Wear related properties were simultaneously recorded at set intervals.…”

“…The blade was fully examined with regards to the nominal and actual properties according to Table 1, also previously reported [1]. The workpiece material was characterised with regard to its microstructure and hardness, shown in Tables 2 and 3.…”

“…Several different methods of assessing the wear modes and mechanisms have been previously reported [1], the chip formation in bandsawing has also been reported [2]. Further work has been undertaken in the above area to relate wear with quantified parameters of forces and specific cutting energy.…”

“…For bandsawing of austenitic stainless steel, the major wear mode is associated with the rounding of the cutting edge and forming of a worn flank [1][2][3][4]. The change in cutting edge geometry leads to an increase in cutting forces and hence changes to the specific cutting energy.…”

Measurement of specific cutting energy for evaluating the efficiency of bandsawing different workpiece materials

“…Although machining with bandsaws is a very old process, research efforts are very limited compared to the machining with other multipoint cutting tools (e.g., milling) [3][4][5][6]. Recent work undertaken by Sarwar et al [7][8][9][10][11] and Anderson et al [12][13][14] have lead to a better fundamental understanding of the bandsawing such as cutting forces and stress generated in the bandsaw teeth, chip formation mechanism, wear modes and mechanisms, etc.. However, researches are still lacking on the fundamental behaviour of bandsawing in different workpiece materials.…”