Investigation on wear behaviour of cryogenically treated TiA1N coated tungsten carbide inserts in turning

Cryogenic treatment has been ascribed as a way of improving the cutting life of tungsten carbide turning inserts. Most of the research conducted till date has not reported any effort to excavate the effect of cryogenic treatment on the performance of coated tungsten carbide inserts in terms of adhesion strength of coatings deposited on tungsten carbide substrate. In order to understand the effect of cryogenic treatment on the adhesion strength of coatings, a comparative investigation of the wear behaviour and machining performance of cryogenically treated coated tungsten carbide inserts in orthogonal turning has been carried out in this study. The commercially available TiA1N coated square shaped tungsten carbide inserts (P25) were procured and subjected to cryogenic treatment at two levels -110 degrees C (shallow treatment) and -196 degrees C (deep treatment) of temperature independently. The criterion selected for determining the turning performance was based on the maximum flank wear (0.6 mm) as recommended in ISO 3685-1993. The results showed that shallow cryogenically treated coated tungsten carbide inserts performed significantly better as compared with deep cryogenically treated and untreated inserts. Major outcome of the present study includes a substantial decrease in tool life of deep cryogenically treated inserts as compared to untreated inserts indicating the destructive effect of deep cryogenic temperature (-196 degrees C) on TiA1N coated inserts which is further supported by VDI-3198 indentation test. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.