ABSTRACT

The excellent mechanical properties of Titanium alloys such as high strength to weight ratio and
exceptional corrosion resistance had raising a lot of interest in the research circles. However,
because of its poor machinability, the machining process becomes complicated. As an
alternative, the coated cutting tools have been successfully used in the turning of Titanium alloys.
The most popular gold colour coating applied on high-speed steel and carbide tools is Titanium
Carbonitride (TiCN). The significant properties like high hardness and low coefficient of friction
of TiCN make it the most advantageous tool material for the machining of Titanium alloys, in
particular Ti6Al4V. In this work, the study is focused on turning experiments at cutting speeds of
125rev/min, 140rev/min and 185rev/min on titanium alloy, TI-6Al-4V, using TiCN cutting tool
inserts. The 0.2mm depth of cut and 0.15mm feed rate remained constant. The cutting tools
undergo 30 times turning process in a length of 200mm per cycle at three different cutting
speeds. The data was collected to see the relationship between the parameters of this study. The
wear mechanism was examined using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) while the tool life
was calculated using Taylors equation. On the other hand, surface roughness was measured
using portable Surface Roughness Surf test SJ-210 s. Based on the results, the tool life is
decreased dramatically as the cutting speeds increased. In contrast, the observation of the surface
roughness illustrates the increasing of the average roughness, Ra which result the low quality of
the surface finish. Meanwhile, the characterization of the wear was performed using SEM where
the wear mechanism acting on the tools were found to be flank wear and crater wear. By further
analysis of the wear, it was found that diffusion of carbon between the tool and workpiece
material occurred during the machining.