Increasing productivity in turning of hard-to-cut materials by means of modified flank faces

The high thermo-mechanical tool load during cutting of hard-to-cut material leads to an increased tool wear, which affects the surface integrity and tool life adversely. An innovative approach to counter the wear is to retract the tools flank face at a certain distance from the cutting edge. The so-called flank face modification geometrically limits the tool wear and increases the available material of the tool, which can be removed by the abrasive cutting process until a certain tool life criterion is reached. However, the flank face modification weakens the mechanical stability of the cutting edge. To avoid tool breakage due to excessive mechanical stress, this paper presents a new design approach based on static finite element simulations. Finally, experimental results show an increase in tool life up to 75% compared to conventional tools with these designed modifications