Experimental support for a model-based prediction of tool wear

Since the development of the Taylor’s equation in the early 1900s, the empirical approaches to understanding tool wear have been extensively used by manufacturing industries. The empirical approaches provide a convenient means of obtaining a relationship among the various machining parameters such as cutting speed, depth of cut, feed rate, approach angle, etc. However, as many types of work materials and cutting tools are utilized by industries, developing an empirical equation for each combination of work material and cutting tool is too costly and time-consuming. Based on the previous experimental data from machining various steels (both pearlitic and spherodized microstructures), comprehensive equations for both flank and crater wear are proposed, and its consistency across the whole data set is checked. However, when machining pearlitic steels at high cutting speed (above the cutting speed of 200 m/min in our experiments), phase transformation restricts the model’s applicability. With phase transformation, the abrasive action of cementite is suppressed as the cementite phase in pearlitic microstructure transforms into austenite. Despite of this shortcoming, a new model-based approach is promising, in which the developed model can be directly extended to other work materials and cutting tools without extensive machining experiments.