On the tool wear mechanisms in dry and cryogenic turning Additive Manufactured titanium alloys

Ti6Al4V is commonly considered a difficult-to-cut metal alloy. In order to increase its machinability reducing the cutting temperature, cryogenic cooling with Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) has recently received much attention especially in the biomedical field being non-toxic, safe and clean. This work is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of this cooling strategy in comparison with dry cutting in semi-finishing turning different Ti6Al4V microstructural variants produced by two Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques, namely Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) and Electron Beam Melting (EBM). The obtained results prove a correlation between the mechanical and thermal properties of the investigated alloys and the tool wear mechanisms in both dry cutting and cryogenic cooling conditions.