Machining of Iron-Carbon Alloys by the Use of Poly-Crystalline Diamond Cutting Inserts with Internal Cooling

Poly-crystalline diamond (PCD) is an extremely tough, synthetically produced cutting tool material, which offers outstanding capabilities concerning wear behavior in abrasive cutting environments. Currently, the primary application of PCD cutting tools is the machining of non-ferrous materials, as the diamond’s carbon high affinity towards iron causes diffusion effects while cutting steel with rising temperature. This effect significantly reduces tool life. To lower the occurring temperature of the cutting process, and therefore avoid the reaction of carbon and iron, a thermal functionalization of the cutting inserts has been investigated. The results give insight into making PCD cutting tools economically usable for the machining of iron-carbon materials.

Damage Evaluation of CMCs after Drilling with Geometrically Defined Cutting Edges

In this contribution a new method of drilling Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC) with geometrically defined cutting edges is introduced. For this, tools with massive PCD (Poly Crystalline Diamond) drilling bits are applied. To evaluate the drill hole quality the damage behavior is analyzed by an optical method and a new quality index is introduced. The fundamental investigations on the basic drilling parameters of a C/C-SiC material are presented