Work-hardening in the drilling of austenitic stainless steels

Due to specific properties arising from their structure (high toughness, work-hardening, low heat conductivity) austenitic stainless steels belong to the group of materials that are difficult to machine. Drilling of these steels is even more difficult as it is not easy to follow the cutting process going on at the drill tip. The paper presents an experimental investigation of the chip transformation process on the cutting edges using quick-stop of the drilling processes as a basis to establish a real cutting model for the drilling austenitic stainless steels. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.