The development of cutting tools plays an important role in the history of human progress. As early as the 28th to 20th century BC, brass cones, copper cones, drills, knives and other copper cutting tools appeared in China. In the late Warring States period (3rd century BC), copper cutting tools were made due to the mastery of carburizing technology. The drill bits and saws at that time were somewhat similar to modern flat drills and saws.
The rapid development of cutting tools came in the late 18th century, along with the development of steam engines and other machines.
In 1783, René of France first made a milling cutter. In 1923, Schletter of Germany invented cemented carbide. When cemented carbide was used, the efficiency was more than twice that of high-speed steel, and the surface quality and dimensional accuracy of the workpieces cut were also greatly improved.
Due to the high prices of high-speed steel and cemented carbide, in 1938, Degussa of Germany obtained a patent for ceramic cutting tools. In 1972, General Electric of the United States produced polycrystalline artificial diamond and polycrystalline cubic boron nitride blades. These non-metallic tool materials allow the tools to cut at higher speeds.
In 1969, Sandvik Steel of Sweden obtained a patent for the production of titanium carbide coated cemented carbide blades using chemical vapor deposition. In 1972, Bangsa and Lagulan of the United States developed a physical vapor deposition method to coat a titanium carbide or titanium nitride hard layer on the surface of cemented carbide or high-speed steel cutting tools. The surface coating method combines the high strength and toughness of the base material with the high hardness and wear resistance of the surface layer, so that this composite material has better cutting performance.
Due to the fact that parts working under high temperature, high pressure, high speed, and in corrosive fluid media are using more and more difficult-to-process materials, the automation level of cutting processing and the requirements for processing accuracy are getting higher and higher. When choosing the angle of the tool, it is necessary to consider the influence of various factors, such as workpiece material, tool material, processing properties (rough and fine processing), etc., and it must be reasonably selected according to the specific situation.
Common tool materials: high-speed steel, cemented carbide (including metal ceramics), ceramics, CBN (cubic boron nitride), PCD (polycrystalline diamond), because their hardness is harder than one, so generally speaking, the cutting speed is also higher than one.
Tool material performance analysis
High-speed steel:
It can be divided into ordinary high-speed steel and high-performance high-speed steel.
Ordinary high-speed steel, such as W18Cr4V, is widely used in the manufacture of various complex tools. Its cutting speed is generally not too high, and it is 40-60m/min when cutting ordinary steel.
High-performance high-speed steel, such as W12Cr4V4Mo, is smelted by adding some carbon content, vanadium content, cobalt, aluminum and other elements to ordinary high-speed steel. Its durability is 1.5-3 times that of ordinary high-speed steel.
Cemented carbide:
According to GB2075-87 (reference 190 standard), it can be divided into three categories: P, M, and K. P-type cemented carbide is mainly used for processing ferrous metals with long chips, marked with blue; M-type is mainly used for processing ferrous metals and non-ferrous metals, marked with yellow, also known as general cemented carbide, and K-type is mainly used for processing ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals and non-metallic materials with short chips, marked with red.
The Arabic numerals after P, M, and K indicate their performance and the load or processing conditions during processing. The smaller the number, the higher the hardness and the worse the toughness.
Ceramics:
Ceramic materials have good wear resistance and can process high-hardness materials that are difficult or impossible to process with traditional tools. In addition, ceramic tools can eliminate the electricity consumed by annealing processing, and thus can also increase the hardness of the workpiece and extend the service life of the machine equipment.
Ceramic blades have little friction with metal during cutting, and are not easy to stick to the blades during cutting, and are not easy to produce built-up edges. In addition, they can be cut at high speed. Therefore, under the same conditions, the surface roughness of the workpiece is relatively low. The tool life is several times or even dozens of times higher than that of traditional tools, reducing the number of tool changes during processing; it is resistant to high temperatures and has good red hardness. It can cut continuously at 1200℃. Therefore, the cutting speed of ceramic blades can be much higher than that of cemented carbide. It can perform high-speed cutting or realize “turning and milling instead of grinding”, and the cutting efficiency is 3-10 times higher than that of traditional tools, achieving the effect of saving 30-70% or more of working hours, electricity, and machine tools
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CBN:
This is the second highest hardness material known so far. The hardness of CBN composite sheets is generally HV3000~5000. It has high thermal stability and high-temperature hardness, and has high oxidation resistance. It does not produce oxidation at 1000℃, and does not react chemically with iron materials at 1200~1300℃. It has good thermal conductivity and low friction coefficient
Polycrystalline diamond PCD:
Diamond knives have the characteristics of high hardness, high compressive strength, good thermal conductivity and wear resistance, and can achieve high processing accuracy and processing efficiency in high-speed cutting. Since the structure of PCD is a fine-grained diamond sintered body with different orientations, although a binder is added, its hardness and wear resistance are still lower than those of single crystal diamond. The affinity between non-ferrous metals and non-metallic materials is very small, and the chips are not easy to stick to the tool tip to form built-up edge during processing.
Application range of each material:
High-speed steel: mainly used in forming tools and complex shapes and other occasions that require high toughness;
Carbide: the widest application range, basically all can be used;
Ceramics: mainly used in hard parts turning and rough processing and high-speed processing of cast iron parts;
CBN: mainly used in hard parts turning and high-speed processing of cast iron parts (generally speaking, it has better wear resistance, impact toughness and fracture resistance than ceramics and is more efficient);
PCD: mainly used in high-efficiency cutting of non-ferrous metals and non-metallic materials.
Post time: Mar-10-2025
