Cutting temperature and tool wear of hard turning hardened bearing steel

A study was undertaken to investigate the performance of PCBN tool in the finish turning of GCr15 bearing steel with different hardness between HRC30 and 64. A natural thermocouple was used to measure the cutting temperature, and tool life and cutting temperature were investigated and compared. The objective was to determine the influence of the workpiece hardness on changes in cutting temperature and tool wear characteristics. According to the experimental results, the critical hardness when turning hardened GCr15 bearing steel with a PCBN tool is about HRC50.