Hot Milling: A Proposal to Minimize Thermal Cracks Formation in Cemented Carbide Tools

It is well known that milling is a rotating and interrupted cutting process in which the milling cutter is made up of a number of inserts placed around its body and that each insert has the function of removing an amount of material from the workpiece per revolution. This feature induces the cyclic thermal loading in the cutting tool edge leading the insert to thermal fatigue, which induces nucleation and propagation of thermal cracks and accelerates the process of tool wear. This paper proposes a method to minimize this thermal cycling effect. In this case, hot air was blown into the idle phase of the milling cutter during face milling of an AISI 1045 steel with coated cemented carbide inserts. The main goal was to make the process quasi-continuous from the thermal viewpoint. Trials were carried out dry, at room temperature and with hot air applied at 100, 350 and 580°C, and wet at room temperature and 580°C. In this last case, an MQL (Minimum Quantity of Lubricant) system was used to create a spray of cutting fluid. After milling trials, the inserts were taken to a scanning electron microscope where the number of thermal cracks, wear and other damage was analyzed. It was observed that the heating of the idle phase helped reducing the number of thermal cracks and tool wear.