Cutting Experiments in Cutting Speeds of up to 200 m/s with a High-Speed Impact Cutting Tester
High-speed orthogonal cutting experiments with cutting speeds of up to 200 m/s with a high-speed impact cutting tester of air-gun type are attempted. In this tester, a light projectile with a small built-in cutting tool is loaded into a tube, being accelerated by a compressed gas. The projectile captures the chip that is indispensable to analyze the cutting mechanism. The projectile holding the chip is decelerated by another compressed gas just after finishing the cutting, being stopped without damage in the tube. Successful experiment can be accomplished by setting adequate values of the operation parameters for the experiment, which are the pressure of each gas and the opening and shutting time of the solenoid-controlled valve for each compressed gas. In order to determine the adequate values of these parameters, a ballistic simulator that simulates the velocity and position of the projectile traveling in the tube is developed. By setting the values of these parameters obtained by the simulator, the cutting speed of 200 m/s is achieved when the ambient pressure is set to be a vacuum and helium is used for each compressed gas. This paper describes the ballistic simulator developed and shows the experimental results of the high-speed cutting of aluminum alloy A2017.