Recent studies have shown that machining under specific cooling and cutting conditions can be used to induce a nanocrystalline surface layer in the workspiece. This layer has beneficial properties, such as improved fatigue strength, wear resistance and tribological behavior. In machining, a promising approach for achieving grain refinement in the surface layer is the application of cryogenic cooling. The aim is to use the last step of the machining operation to induce the desired surface quality to save time-consuming and expensive post machining surface treatments. The material used in this study was AISI 304 stainless steel. This austenitic steel suffers from low yield strength that limits its technological applications. In this paper, liquid nitrogen (LN2) as cryogenic coolant, as well as minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), was applied and investigated. As a reference, conventional flood cooling was examined. Besides the cooling conditions, the feed rate was varied in four steps. A large rounded cutting edge radius and finishing cutting parameters were chosen to increase the mechanical load on the machined surface. The surface integrity was evaluated at both, the microstructural and the topographical levels. After turning experiments, a detailed analysis of the microstructure was carried out including the imaging of the surface layer and hardness measurements at varying depths within the machined layer. Along with microstructural investigations, different topological aspects, e.g., the surface roughness, were analyzed. It was shown that the resulting microstructure strongly depends on the cooling condition. This study also shows that it was possible to increase the micro hardness in the top surface layer significantly.
Fir tree slots in engine disks pose a great challenge to the production process, especially due to the use of increasingly filigree geometries. Broaching with high-speed steel (HSS) as cutting tool material has been established as the state of the art process. However, this manufacturing process obtains the disadvantages of high tool costs and long waiting times in case of geometry adaptations. Alternative manufacturing technologies, namely electrochemical machining (ECM) and wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) offer the potential to replace broaching. Because of their removal mechanism being independent of the mechanical properties of the material, these processes are not hindered by increasingly higher thermomechanical material properties. Furthermore, the tool in WEDM is not specific to geometry, allowing fast adaptations. Nevertheless, the technology specific white layer may reduce the mechanical integrity of the engine disk. ECM in contrast has no negative impact on the rim zone of the workpiece but the tool is still specific to the slot geometry. Consequently, this paper experimentally investigates the three different manufacturing technologies in order to evaluate their capability to manufacture fir tree slots with respect to geometric accuracy and surface integrity. Subsequently, the technology specific manufacturing costs are considered to outline the economic potential of each process while taking into account the influence of the batch size.
Fir tree slots in turbine discs are used as an attachment between the disc and the blades. To a great extend, these slots are manufactured by broaching. Currently, the used cutting tool material is High Speed Steel (HSS). Due to its low high temperature stability, the manufacturing process is limited to low cutting speeds (vc = 2–5 m/min) and presents, therefore, a bottleneck in the turbine manufacturing process. To increase the productivity, cemented carbide can be used as cutting tool material with cutting speeds up to five times higher than those used for HSS. Due to the high safety demands, the broaching process requires extensive process design to ensure a high process reliability. For the tool design, profound knowledge of the mechanical loads is mandatory due to its major effect on the manufactured part. Empirical research to investigate the actual mechanical load is time-consuming and expensive due to high tool costs, especially of cemented carbide broaches, and the high amount of possible tool geometry combinations. In this paper, an alternative approach to determine the cutting forces is presented. Grooving experiments were conducted in order to reproduce the engagement conditions from the broaching process. If the transferability of this approach can be shown, the amount of broaching tools as well as the availability of a broaching machine tool for the design of new broaching tools can be decrease dramatically. This would result in a reduction of tool design time and an increase in productivity for tool manufacturers.
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