The Process of Composite Materials Machining Cutting Tools Profiling

Cutting composite materials might be associated with difficulties, namely the severe wear of cutting tool due to materials characteristics. The active part of a cutting tool should have high tensile strength, a certain hardness index and a small tool angle. To meet the requirements, the cutting part of a tool must be made of hard alloy, however, shaping the edge of such geometry results in the unsatisfactory quality of the product. The article suggests that the cutting edge of the tool should be grinded by using a diamond wheel along with an electrochemical process, making cutting easier. This requires defining the rational modes of combined diamond grinding for hard alloys with specific cutting edge geometry. Lab tests have revealed the dependence of surface roughness and a specific removal rate of wheels from the current density of diamond wheel dressing and the current density of the detail etching. The research has established that with the increase of electric grinding parameters the surface roughness decreases but the specific wear of the grinding disk increases. The research found that the combined method of electric diamond grinding has the advantage vs the rest ones; the machined surface has a quite satisfactory quality and the amount of tool chipping does not exceed 10 micrometers. Based on the presented research, the practices for application of grinding mode for cutting tool are worked out to be used for composite material. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.