Wear resistance performance of boron nitride coatings on end milling cutters

Abstract

For defence industry applications, the machining of ultra-high strength steels or aluminium with ballistic temper grades is a widely-used operation. Therefore, it is a great challenge to find an optimum solution for tool wear. In that sense, tool coatings provide various solutions for machining of hard materials or improving wear resistance. A cost-effective tool coating provides longer tool life, hence decreases the tool cost contribution in production. Boron nitride (BN) coating could be thought as a new generation coating method compared to titanium nitride (TiN), aluminium titanium nitride (AlTiN) or silicon aluminium oxy-nitride (SiAlON). BN coating material has a great strength, toughness and chemical stability whereas it has an important disadvantage of high intrinsic stress. In this industrial study, standard end mill cutters are coated with BN material by physical vapour deposition (PVD) method. The coated and uncoated milling tools are compared according to their wear resistance and the obtained workpiece surface roughness. First results of the study are presented in this paper. © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.