SUITABILITY OF MECHANICAL CHARACTERIZATION METHODS FOR DIAMOND-COATEDCEMENTED CARBIDE TOOLS WITH REGARD TO TOOLING APPLICATIONS

In the last few years the world-wide development of diamond coatings f or cutting tools has led to a quality level of commercialization, with customers increasingly tending to replace conventional cutting tools with diamond-coated cemented carbide tools. Unfortunately, different t ooling applications require specific properties of the substrate/coati ng system with different loading characteristics. As there was no well -understood and reliable laboratory test method available up to now, c utting tests were the usual techniques used to classify the adhesion o f diamond coatings. In this paper the results obtained by an investiga tion of the cutting performance and the coating adhesion of diamond-co ated cemented carbide inserts with modified properties are presented a nd the possibility of a correlation is verified. Concerning the cuttin g performance, turning, milling and drilling operations of an AlSi10Mg alloy were carried out. Furthermore, the Rockwell test was investigat ed for evaluating the adhesion of diamond coatings. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.