Mechanism of Wear

in HSS cutting tools

Prepared by
JYOTI RANJAN NAYAK
jyotiranjan_541@yahoo.c
om
 Introduction
• Metal cutting puts extreme demands on the tool and
tool material through conditions of high forces, high
contact pressures, high temperatures, and intense
chemical attack by difficult to cut work materials

• Most often cutting tools are used close to their ultimate

resistance against these loads, especially to the limiting
thermal and mechanical stresses.

• Tool wear describes the gradual failure of cutting tools

due to regular operation

• Presently, no viable theories exist for predicting tool

wear on the basis of properties of tool and work
material
 Why High Speed Steel
• In spite of the increasing use of high performance
tool materials high speed steels (HSS) are still
frequently used.

• The relatively high toughness and the possibility of

economic manufacturing of tools with complicated
geometries justify the use of HSS

• Powder metallurgical grades in combination with

Electro Slag Heating (ESH) and Physical Vapour
Deposition (PVD) coating technologies has further
improved the performance of HSS cutting tools
 The cutting process in brief
• Through plastic shear of the work material and sliding of
work material against the tool flank and rake face a
characteristic temperature profile is established

• The principle heat sources are located at the primary

shear zone in the forming chip and in the frictional
contact between chip and tool (secondary shear zone),
and the highest temperature is reached on the rake face
at some distance from the edge.

• The cutting edge is forcing its way through the interior of

the work piece like a propagating wedge, both surfaces
of the opened “crack” represent highly chemically
reactive metal where there is no access to external
oxygen or cutting fluids to this region
Generally, the over all cutting force F is related to cutting speed and
feed as indicated in Figure. It is indicated that a low friction coating
can lower the cutting force and thereby giving a lower edge
temperature, which can be utilized to increase the productivity
 Tool material properties
High temperature strength
• A metal cutting tool
must be able to
combine high
hardness (or high
yield strength) with
high fracture
strength at
elevated
temperature

• The latter is
especially
important in
Primary shear zone
 Tool material properties
contd..
Fracture strength vs. hardness

• High hardness is
associated with
brittleness, and
strengthening by
martensitic
hardening,
dispersion of hard
particles, etc. of a
metallic materials
lowers the fracture
strength
Work materials for HSS cutting
tools
• Generally, the work materials are macroscopically much softer
than the tools. However, many work materials contain
constituents (carbides, nitrides or oxides) that are harder (HV
1500 – 3000) and more temperature resistant

• Chip formation generally occurs by extremely high shear rates at

which hardness of a carbon steel may well match the hardness of
the cutting edge
Work material Hardness [HV] Hard particles Ductility Work harden

C-steels 200 - 250 Cementite Yes Yes

Cast irons 200 - 250 Cementite - -
γ−steels 180 - 250 - Yes Yes
Al-alloys 100 - 150 Oxides, AlFeSi Yes -
Ti-alloys 200 - 350 - Yes Yes
Ni-based 200 - 350 Yes Yes Yes
alloys
 Tool Wear
• Presently, no viable theories exist for predicting tool wear on the
basis of properties of tool and work material

• Optical and electron microscopic and auto radiographic

observations suggest that the tool wear phenomena occur at
microscopic and atomic levels

• Depending on cutting operation, cutting parameters, work and

tool material the performance of the tool is limited by nose wear,
flank wear, crater wear, edge chippings, or combinations of these.

• Depending on the same parameters, the wear either occurs

gradually by abrasive or adhesive wear, through plastic
deformation, by more discrete losses of material through discrete
fracture mechanisms, or by combinations of these
 Types of tool wear
Lim and Ashby consider that two major forms of wear are
commonly observed on a cutting tool: flank wear and crater wear

• Flank wear generally increases cutting force and the interfacial

temperature, leading normally to dimensional inaccuracy and
vibration which making the cutting operation less efficient

• Crater wear on the rake face is usually formed at some distance

from the cutting edge and it is most frequently observed when
cutting steels and other high-melting-point metals at relatively
high cutting speeds .This crater gradually becomes deeper with
time and may lead to the breakage of the cutting edge, rendering
the tool useless.
Types of tool wear mechanism
For uncoated tools:
• Abrasive wear
• Adhesive wear
• Large scale plastic deformation
• Fatigue and fracture
• Diffusion wear

For coated tools:

• Coating removal due to poor substrate
preparation
• Coating removal due to thermal softening of
the substrate
 Abrasive wear
• Harder tool shears away small particles from the softer work
material. Softer work material also removes small particles from
the tool material but slowly.
• The hard tool particles are caught between the hard tool and soft
workpiece, and this causes additional abrasion wear.
• Hard impurites in Tool and workpiece contain hard particles
cause abrasion wear during machining.
 Abrasive wear contd…

Wear dominates the crater and flank wear of a milling tool. Paper knife. An extremely fine-
The arrows point at ridges of HSS material relatively scaled abrasion, only resisted by the
resistant to abrasion. There is also evidence of edge hard carbides, dominates the tool
fracture. Work material: C-steel. wear.
 Adhesive wear
• Adhesive wear is caused by the formation of welded asperity
junctions between the chip and the tool faces and the fracture of
the junctions by the shearing force so that tiny fragments of the
tool are torn out and adhere to the chip.
• The adhesive component, often referred to as mild adhesive wear,
is a tearing of superficial HSS material by high shear forces
resulting in a slow drag of the surface layer and removal of small
fragments in the direction of chip flow.
• If the tool is used to its
upper limit of heat
resistance, severe adhesive
wear may result as a large
scale plastic flow of surface
material in the direction of
the chip flow

• Adhesive wear dominates

the flank and crater wear of
HSS tools if the edges
reach high temperatures,
i.e. at high cutting speed.
Adhesive wear is further
promoted when cutting
chemically aggressive
materials.

• Both mild and severe

adhesive wear are
primarily resisted by the
Flank wear

Tool wear
because of built-
up edge
 Large scale plastic
deformation
• Sometimes, the HSS tool edge is loaded beyond its yield strength
and deforms by large-scale plastic deformation resulting in edge
blunting. This has been observed when HSS soften due to
annealing during machining
 Fatigue and fracture
• Macroscopic fracture of the whole tool can occur but is a rather
scarce event. More common is localised chippings of the tool
edge, see. The chippings seem to be initiated by grinding marks
running parallel to the edge
 Diffusion wear
• Diffusion wear characterizes the material loss due to diffusion of
atoms of the tool material into the work piece moving over it

• Requirements for diffusion wear are

 metallurgical bonding of the two surfaces so that atoms can move
freely across the interface,
 a temperature high enough to make rapid diffusion possible
 some solubility of the tool material phases in the work material

• Suh and Kramer proposed the wear rate is controlled by the mass
diffusion rate

• Sproul Ono and Takeyama have shown that the chemical reaction
taking place at the interface has a major effect on wear as oxygen
gas accelerates the formation of oxide layers that are
continuously torn off resulting in increased wear, while wear is
decreased by an environment of argon gas.
• Altintas proposed , the diffusion wear appear when the
temperature increase at the contact zones, the atoms in the two
materials become restive and migrate to the opposite material
where the concentration of the same atom is less
 Wear mechanisms of coated
tools
• Coating will primarily protect the cutting edge in two ways:
– Acting as a shield against abrasive and mild adhesive wear.
– Reducing the tool temperature by reducing the friction between tool
and work material.

• The coatings combine a superior hardness (abrasive wear

resistance) with relatively low chemical reactivity with metallic
materials (adhesive wear resistance)

• Coated tools fail by fatigue and discrete delamination/detachment

than removal by slow gradual wear. Once the coating is removed,
the wear mechanisms are the same as those of uncoated, although
more severe because more severe cutting parameters.The
mechanisms are:
– Coating removal due to poor substrate preparation
– Coating removal due to thermal softening of the substrate
 Coating removal due to poor
substrate preparation
• There are primarily two ways by which failure in HSS substrate
preparation can occur.
 The surface temperature during grinding/polishing reaches above the
austenitisation temperature resulting in a brittle interlayer of
untempered martensite,
 The resulting substrate surface is too rough
The lateral compressive
stresses state σ present in
most PVD coatings will
generate interfacial
stresses S. At the top of e.g.
grinding ridges this stress is
a tensile “lift off” stress that
may reach the same order
of magnitude as the
residual stress σ [12]. Such
ridges can result from
rough grinding.
Tin coating detachment along grinding
ridges of a HSS cutting tool

Microscopic fatigue cracks observed on the rake face close to the edge of
a hob tooth that has been cutting in carbon steel
 Coating removal due to
thermal softening of the
substrate
• Once the HSS substrate material reaches a temperature level of
excessive softening, it fails to resist the contact pressure, and the
brittle coating fractures.
• The dark etching contrast underneath the coating, which reveals
thermal softening due to over tempering. The coating fractures
and individual fragments are then detached in the form of small
fragments.
Wear Cause of wear Counteractive tool
mechanis properties
m
Abrasive Hard particles or other hard phases in High matrix hardness, large
wear the work material remove material by a volume of hard phases, hard
ploughing action. coating
Mild and High cutting speed generates high tool Smooth surface, sharp edge,
severe surface temperatures that facilitate high hot hardness, high
adhesive strong adhesion between work and tool thermal conductivity,
wear materials. The worst situation prevails chemically inert (anti sticking)
for tough, ductile and chemically coating
reactive work materials with low thermal
conductivity.
Plastic High cutting speed generates excessive High hot hardness, high
deformati edge temperatures in combination with thermal Conductivity.
on high loads.
Fracture Interrupted cutting, especially in Smooth tool surface, high
and combination with high cutting speed and fracture toughness promoted
fatigue use of cutting fluid, a tough and ductile by a defect free HSS with a
work material. Use of insufficiently sharp fine grained structure of both
tool edges. matrix and hard phases

Table shows common wear mechanisms of HSS tools, their cause and how to fight them
 Towards better performance
of HSS tools
• Improving the HSS material: Hardness, heat resistance
and fracture toughness both macroscopically and microscopically
are the prerequisites of high tool performance. Recent HSS
development has focused on the homogeneity and cleanliness of
the HSS steel.
It is possible to
further improve the
hardness/toughness
ratio by further
reducing the size of
the matrix grains
and hard phase
particles down to
the nanometer
range (applying
nano-technology) a
further step is
possible
• Improving the surface integrity: Avoiding deterioration of the
superficial HSS material by excessive heat generation. The
macroscopic strength and the resistance to edge chipping of HSS
materials is very sensitive to surface defects generated by the
surface. A smooth tool surface contributes to the resistance
against micro cracking and to avoid premature detachment of
coatings
 References
• Söderberg, S., Jacobson S., Olsson, M., Wear Atlas of HSS Cutting
Tools, Proceedings of the 5th International Congress on Tribology
(Eurotrib 89), Helsinki, Finland, Finnish Society for Tribology, 1989
• Lim, C.Y.H., Lim, S.C., Lee, K.S., The performance of TiN-coated high
speed steel tool inserts in turning, Tribology International 32 (1999)
393-398
• Hogmark, S. Jacobson, S., Larsson, M., Wiklund, U., Mechanical and
tribological requirements and evaluation of coating composites, In
Modern Tribology 2000. Ed. B. Bushan, Vol II, 931-959 CRC Press
2001
• Le May, I., Principles of mechanical metallurgy, Elsevier 1981
• Larsson, M., Olsson M., Hedenqvist, P., Hogmark, S., Mechanisms of
coating failure as demonstrated by scratch and indentation testing of
TiN coated HSS - On the influence of coating thickness, substrate
hardness and surface topography, Surface Engineering 16, 5 (2000)
436-444
• Wiklund, U., Gunnars, J., Hogmark, S., Influence of residual stresses
on fracture and delamination of thin hard coatings, Wear 232 (1999)
262-269