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Machining abrasive carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP) is characterised by extensive mechanical wear. In consequence, the cutting edge micro-geometry and thus the tool/material contact situation are continuously changing, which affects process forces and machining quality. As a conclusion, a fundamental understanding of the tool wear behaviour and its influencing factors is crucial in order to improve performance and lifetime of cutting tools. This paper focuses on a fundamental tool wear analysis of uncoated tungsten carbide cutting inserts with different combinations of fibre cutting angles and tool geometries. For this purpose, orthogonal machining experiments with unidirectional CFRP material are conducted, where the wear progression of the micro-geometry is investigated by means of five wear parameters lα, lγ, γ*, α*, and bc. For detecting the actual contact zone of the cutting edge and to measure the elastic spring back of the material, the flank face is marked via short pulsed laser processing. Furthermore, the process forces and the wear rate are measured. It is shown that the material loss due to wear clearly varies along the tool’s contact region and is highly dependent on the clearance angle and the fibre cutting angle Φ, while the influence of the tested rake angles is mostly negligible. Especially in machining Φ=30° and Φ=60°, a strong elastic spring back is identified, which is more intense for smaller clearance angles. For all tested configurations, the material’s elastic spring back increases in intensity as wear progresses which, in combination with the decreasing clearance angle, is the main reason for high thrust forces.

Especially for slicing hard and brittle materials, wire sawing with electroplated diamond wires is widely used since it combines a high surface quality with a minimum kerf loss. Furthermore, it allows a high productivity by machining multiple workpieces simultaneously. During the machining operation, the wire/workpiece interaction and thus the material removal conditions with the resulting workpiece quality are determined by the material properties and the process and tool parameters. However, applied to machining of carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP), the process complexity potentially increases due to the anisotropic material properties, the elastic spring back potential of the material, and the distinct mechanical wear due to the highly abrasive carbon fibres. Therefore, this experimental study analyses different combinations of influencing factors with respect to process forces, workpiece surface temperatures at the wire entrance, and the surface quality in wire sawing unidirectional CFRP material. As main influencing factors, the cutting and feed speeds, the density of diamond grains on the wire, the workpiece thickness, and the fibre orientation of the CFRP material are analysed and discussed. For the tested parameter settings, it is found that while the influence of the grain density is negligible, workpiece thickness, cutting and feed speeds affect the process substantially. In addition, higher process forces and workpiece surface temperatures do not necessarily deteriorate the surface quality.

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