Study on Characteristics of Tool Wear and Breakage of Ultrasonic Cutting Nomex Honeycomb Core with the Disc Cutter

Abstract

Ultrasonic cutting is an advanced technology for processing Nomex honeycomb materials. The disc cutter is one of the most commonly used tools, whose wear and breakage state have an important impact on the honeycomb material machining process. Currently, the disc cutter lacks systematic characterization methods, and its tool wear laws are not yet clear. This paper conducts a wear experiment of the disc cutter in an ultrasonic cutting Nomex honeycomb core and proposes the attributes of cutting edge rounding (CER), flank wear VB, diameter reduction, and cutting edge breakage width to characterize the tool wear and breakage forms quantitatively. Moreover, the tool wear and breakage forms of the disc cutter are categorized, and the variation laws of the disc cutter wear and breakage characteristics are studied. The experimental study reveals that the wear forms of the disc cutter are mainly cutting edge dulling and flank wear. The CER and flank wear VB increase with increasing cutting length, and the wear mechanism is mainly abrasive wear. The breakage forms are mainly chipping and cracking breakage. The diameter reduction changed slowly, and the cutting edge breakage width tended to increase. The surface quality of the honeycomb gradually deteriorates with the increase of tool wear and breakage. The experimental results are important to study the tool wear mechanism of ultrasonic cutting of the Nomex honeycomb core with the disc cutter as well as tool design and manufacture.