Design and Fabrication of Micro Grooves on the Rake Face of Tungsten Carbide Cutting Tools with an Array of Nanofilms

Abstract

The wear rate of a cutting tool mainly affects its life. So it is important for tool manufacturers to think about different techniques to reduce tool wear rate, which in turn helps to increase its life span. This paper proposes an efficient design of an array of micro grooves useful for the deposition of alternate hard and soft nanocoatings which will help to characterize and analyze wear zones of WC inserts. The proposed design of the grooves on tool inserts helps to deposit various nanocoatings which act as a lubricating medium and helps the tool to reduce friction and wear. Grooves were designed based on the chip flow path. Electro discharge machining (EDM) was used for the formation of grooves on the rake face of WC inserts. The authors made an attempt to design efficient and generalized groove pattern to deposit hard and soft alternative nanocoatings on the rake face of the cutting tool. Authors are also suggested that the method proposed in this paper can concentrate on the identified zones instead of depositing the nanocoatings over the entire rake face. This in turn reduces the wastage of Nanomaterial deposited on the tool and also makes optimum rake face utilization. PVD technique is used to deposit alternate soft and hard nanocoatings in the grooves.