Experimental observations on flank wear in machining spherodized plain carbon steels

As a part of a comprehensive study on predicting tool weal; the authors' pr eliminary findings on flank wear are presented in this paper: To understand flank wear commercially available plain carbon steels including AISI 1018, 1045 1065 and 1095 were spherodized and turned using C6 grade carbide inse rts coated with a single layer of TiN, Al2O3 or TiCN at various cutting spe eds. The wear behavior of these inserts is studied in terms of the cementit e content and the physical properties of coating materials at their respect ive cutting temperatures, An infrared pyrometer with fiber-optic cable was used to measure the temperature at a fixed point on the rake face of the in serts. An inverse estimation scheme using the I-D ellipsoidal model of Yen and Wright (I) was employed to obtain the mean temperature of the tool-chip , interface. The scheme suggested by Oxley (2) was then used to estimate th e flank face temperature. The experimental results indicated that flank wea r per sliding distance increases with cementite content and decreases with flank temperature. The general wear behavior of flank wear corresponds well with the prediction based on three-body wear model.