Coated hardmetals are commonly used tool materials for metal cutting applications. For these applications, the substrate- and the coating surface qualities are improved by grinding, polishing, or blasting. The focus of the current work was to study the influence of different combinations of substrate-coating surface processing techniques on the induced damage in Al2O3/TiCN hard-coated WC-12 wt% hardmetal substrates and the depth to which the damage reaches into the substrate. The substrate and coating surfaces were prepared by grinding, polishing, dry blasting, wet blasting, or remaining in the deposited state. Investigations were performed using cyclic indentation with a novel ball-in-cone test method in a vacuum at 700 degrees C, under conditions that imitate the combined shear-compression loads that occur at the cutting edges of metal cutting tools. Additionally, finite element simulations were performed to characterize the stress state arising during ball-in-cone testing. The kinetics of defect formation and accumulation in the hardmetal substrate as a function of the loading situation during the ball-in-cone test will also be discussed. The defects that formed in the substrate during cyclic loading were studied using scanning electron microscopy in cross-sections prepared by focused ion beam milling. A larger increase in defect frequency was observed for rougher coating surfaces and substrate-coating interfaces than for smoother ones. Furthermore, 6 mu m thick coatings exhibited a higher defect frequency after cyclic loading than 15 mu m thick coatings. Most of the observed defects were in the nm-size range close to the substrate-coating interfaces and tended to have increased in size after cyclic loading. The ball-in-cone test set-up enables the study of the damage mechanisms in coated hardmetal substrates with different treatments prior to and after deposition under tunable milling-like stress and temperature conditions.
