Copyrights belong to the authors

MACHINING OF GRAY CAST IRONS AND COMPACTED GRAPHITE IRON

B. Tasdelen1, M. Escursell2, G. Grenmyr 3, L. Nyborg 4

1, 3, 4
Department of Materials and Manufacturing Technology,
Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Gothenburg, Sweden
2
Machining Development Center, SKF, Gothenburg, Sweden

bulent@chalmers.se

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to compare the machinability of gray cast iron and compacted
graphite iron (CGI), in terms of tool life and microstructure. Two gray cast irons with different
graphite morphologies and one CGI were tested. After the tool life tests with carbide and Cubic
Boron Nitride (CBN) inserts, microstructural changes on the machined surfaces was
investigated and SEM analysis of the inserts were performed. The results show that CBN
performed much better than Carbide tools when machining gray cast irons but did not work
when machining CGI due to high diffusional wear. The shorter and thicker graphite flakes for
one of the gray cast iron caused different chip contact and wear mechanism on the inserts. The
comparison of machinability and tool wear gave better understanding of the wear mechanism of
CGI.

Keywords: Compacted graphite iron (CGI), milling, tool wear, surface integrity,
microstructure

1. INTRODUCTION This causes a temporary loss in the contact of the tool

New regulations in USA and Europe will decrease
the maximum allowed emission level for heavy duty
diesel engines. To fulfil the new demands,
combustion pressure in the cylinders must be
significantly increased and therefore new materials
with higher strength are needed. Compacted graphite
iron (CGI), which has improved mechanical
properties, is therefore a potential candidate to
substitute the conventional engine material, gray cast
iron (Dawson and Schroeder, 2000; Sahm, et al.,
2002). On the other hand, CGI has lower
machinability than conventional gray cast irons
(Sahm, et al. 1998; Mocelin, et al., 2004).
For gray cast iron and ductile iron the chip formation
can be described as follows (Mocelin, et al., 2004).
First, the tool starts to compress the material beneath
the flank and creates fracture that propagates ahead
and below the cutting edge. The tool proceeds and a
material fragment is completely detached. In some
cases, especially for gray cast iron, a part of the work
piece material can be torn off in front of the tool.
and the work piece, until the next chip forms. As a
consequence, the surface roughness of the machined
work-piece is increased.
The vermicular shape of the graphite in CGI creates
stronger bonding between the matrix and the graphite
than in ordinary gray cast iron and there is hence less
crack propagation for CGI compared to gray cast
irons (Cohen, et al., 2000; Dawson, et al., 2001).
Furthermore, CGI is also more ductile then gray cast
iron. This entails considerably larger contact with the
cutting insert, resulting in increased temperature and
longer time for chemical reactions between the
cutting tool and the work-piece material (Reuter, U et
al., 1999).
2. EXPERIMENTS AND ANALYSES
2.1 Work piece materials
Table 1 presents data for the work piece materials,
including nominal tensile strength values, average
matrix compositions and graphite characteristics. All

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materials have predominately pearlitic matrix.

However, there is a certain content of free ferrite for
CGI. The gray cast irons were sand cast in blocks. Table 2 Cutting data and insert information
The difference between the gray cast irons was the
treatment for gray cast iron 2 to obtain thicker
Insert vc fz ap ae D
graphite flakes. This also induced certain porosity.
Despite this, both gray cast irons have Type 1 shape (m/min) (mm/tooth) (mm) (mm) (mm)
A graphite according to ASTM. The CGI material
was treated specially with Mg in order to get the Carbide (HM) 275-360 0.15 0.5 70 80
vermicular shape of the graphite which has also S-N260.8
resulted in 4% nodularity. A comparison of graphite -1204-W
morphology between the materials is illustrated in
Figure 1. The sulphur content is kept between 0.08 CBN 700-900 0.15 0.5 70 80
wt% and 0.14 wt% for the gray cast irons and it was S-N260.8
0.02 wt% for the CGI material. -1204-F

Table 1 Selected data for the tested materials

Material Tensile Matrix Graphite 2.3 Analyses of work piece materials

Name Strength Morphology
Gray cast 275 MPa Pearlite Type 1, Size 3 After the tool life tests, the microstructural analysis
Iron 1 of the milled surfaces was performed with the optical
Gray cast 300 MPa Pearlite Type 1, Size 4 microscope. Cross sectional samples were cut from
Iron 2 the milled surfaces with water-jet to minimize the
7 % ferrite Interconnected
CGI 515 MPa impact of cutting on residual stresses and effects on
vermicular
work piece microstructure within the surface zone of
the milled surfaces.

2.4 Tool wear analyses

High temperature and stresses are the main causes of

the tool wear. The two basic wear zones on the
inserts namely, seizure region (adhesive wear) and
sliding region (abrasive wear) can easily be
(a) (b) investigated with scanning electron microscopy
(SEM). In this study, the rake face of the inserts was
investigated and different regions of the chip-insert
contact were imaged with secondary electron
imaging in a Leo Gemini 1550 SEM instrument.
Since sliding of the chip causes work hardening and
oxidization of the material with different thickness
depending on temperature, electron dispersive
spectroscopy (EDS) mapping was also used to find
(c) the different elements in the oxidised clad material.
Fig. 1. Graphite morphology: (a) gray cast iron 1,
(b) gray cast iron 2 and (c) CGI. The tests were stopped at equivalent time intervals to
measure the tool wear. The wear characteristics were
pictured with a Nikon optical microscope and the
2.2 Tooling amount of tool wear was measured with a special
programme, Mätmodul. The contact of the insert with
The face milling of the blocks were performed with the work piece is seen in Figure 2 below.
two different inserts and different cutting data in
order to investigate the machinability of the
materials, see Table 2 for cutting data and insert hd ap
information.

In order to make terminology easy the hardmetal Fig. 2. Insert and work piece contact.
insert, S-N260.8-1204-W, will be denoted as HM
and the cubic boron nitride insert, S-N260.8-1204-F
will be denoted as CBN.

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3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION insert that milled CGI. The fracture is a fatigue
fracture evidenced by the presence of beach marks
on the fracture surface, see arrows in Figure 5 (c).
3.1 Tool life analyses

HM Inserts; The tool life tests at the lower cutting

speed (275 m/min) showed that gray cast iron 1 has
the lowest tool wear for both speeds compared to
gray cast iron 2. The highest wear was observed for
CGI material as seen in Figure 3.

Carbide Insert
0,40
(a) (b)
Grey Iron 1
Grey Iron 2
0,30
CGI
Vb (mm)

0,20

0,10

0,00
0 10 20 30 40 50
Ts (min)
Fig. 3. Tool life results for HM inserts at 275
m/min.
The higher wear on the inserts when milling gray cast
iron 2 compared to gray cast iron 1 is a result of the
combination of graphite morphology (increased
mechanical properties), porosity and a rather higher
carbide content that resulted from nitrogen treatment.
The higher wear resulted in a crack (see arrow in
Figure 4 a) on the end side of depth of cut for gray
cast iron 1 and a breakage (see Figure 4 b) for gray
cast iron 2 at the same place for the higher speed
tests, see Figure 4.
(c)
60 70 80
Fig. 5. Crater wear and insert breakage, rake face on
the HM inserts at 275 m/min, (a) gray cast
iron 1 after 45 min, (b) gray cast iron 2 after
45 min and (c) CGI after 49 min.
CBN Inserts: The flank wear was low for CBN
inserts compared to HM inserts when milling gray
cast iron 1 and gray cast iron 2 at 900 m/min, see
Figure 6. When machining CGI material even with
the lower speed (700 m/min), the CBN inserts
experienced severe wear and the tests were stopped
after 8 minutes due to high diffusion wear. This high
diffusion wear resulted in a deep crater, see Figure 7
for the side views of the inserts.
CBN Insert
0,40

Grey Iron 1
0,30
Grey Iron 2
CGI
Vb (mm)

0,20

(a) (b)
Fig. 4. The edge of the inserts after milling gray 0,10

cast iron 1 (a) and gray cast iron 2 (b).

0,00
When the inserts were examined on the other side of 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Ts (min)
depth of cut, SEM images indicated crater wear on
the inserts that milled gray cast iron 1 and gray cast Fig. 6. Tool life results with CBN inserts for gray
iron 2. The insert that milled CGI material broke. cast iron 1 (900 m/min), gray cast iron 2
(900 m/min) and CGI (700 m/min).
The crater wear changed the contact area and
increased the fatigue loading (interrupted
machining). The varying stress level caused a crack
on the insert corner when milling gray cast iron 2,
see arrow on Figure 5 (b), and a fracture for the

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 Copyrights belong to the authors
(a) (b)
(c)
Fig. 7. Crater wear on CBN inserts, side view for
gray cast iron 1 (900 m/min) after 45 min,
gray cast iron 2 (900 m/min) after 45 min
and CGI (700 m/min) after 8 min.
When examining the rake face of the CBN inserts
with SEM, it was observed that a partial layer
formation was seen only for gray cast iron 1 on the
seizure region of the chip contact. The seizure region
had a clad material in the shape of a band for gray
cast iron 1 but not for gray cast iron 2, see arrow in
Figure 8.
(a) (b)
Fig. 8. Rake face of the CBN inserts showing the
different chip contact and clad material after
45 minutes of cut at 900 m/min for gray cast
iron 1 (a) and gray cast iron 2 (b).
The EDS mapping revealed that the banded structure
is the clad material that was oxidized. Besides O, the
clad material in this seizure region consisted of
mainly Fe, Mn, S and Si, see Figure 9 for the
example of EDS mapping of the region. The same
elements were found in the rest of contact area for
both gray cast irons. When it comes to CGI, the clad
material in the contact area consisted mainly of Fe,
O, Si and Mg.
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Fig. 9. Mapping of CBN insert for gray cast iron 1.
Another observation is that a partial layer formation
occurred very close to cutting edge for gray cast iron
1, but not for gray cast iron 2 and CGI. This banded
layer in the contact is connected to chip formation,
heat distribution in the cutting zones and chemical
interaction between the insert and work piece
material. It was already expected that a layer
formation would be missing when cutting CGI.
However, the lack of this layer when cutting the gray
cast iron 2 means that either a small variation in the
sulphur content or the graphite morphology
difference is the cause for different contact
topography for the two gray cast irons. It has also
been pointed in literature (Mocelin, et al., 2004) that
the easy cracking leads to short chip formation in
gray cast irons. This is also observed in our case and
supposed to be a result of the decreasing interatomic
locking between insert and chip in the seizure region
(Trent and Wright, 2000). This hypothesis is
supported by following arguments. There is sliding
of the chip in the seizure region for gray cast iron 1
as evidenced by the partial layer formation.
However, there is no such layer in the seizure region
on the inserts that milled the gray cast iron 2. The
plasticity of manganese sulphide inclusions must be
adequate to act favourably in the secondary shear
zone, meaning that the characteristics of the sulphide
should not be too fluid (Araki and Yamamato, 1975).
There is an appropriate temperature range for an
effective lubricating action of manganese sulphide
inclusions, not only in the secondary shear zone but
also in the primary shear zone (Araki and Yamamato,
1975). Consequently, if there is another temperature
isotherm distribution on the rake face when cutting
the gray cast iron 2, there could also be a different
banded layer formation. Another reason may also be
the different graphite morphology of gray cast iron 2
compared to that of gray iron 1, which in turn should
affect the contact area. The combination of these two
effects is of course also possible.
It has been commonly anticipated that MnS layer
formation in the gray cast iron acts as a barrier and
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 Copyrights belong to the authors
decreases the chemical affinity between the insert
and the chip ( Cohen, et al., 2000; Dawson, et al.,
2001; Gastel, et al., 2000; Abele, et al., 2002).
However, although we observed no layer formation
in the seizure contact zone for either gray iron 2 or
CGI when cutting with CBN, the high diffusion wear
was only observed for CGI as a deep crater.
Therefore, the affinity of the CBN insert to the work
piece material is another important concern. At
temperatures above 700 °C (at high cutting speeds
for cutting CGI and also gray cast irons), the binder
phase in the CBN tools are not stable. The CBN itself
is also not stable and decomposes forming volatile
boron and nitrous oxides (Gastel, et al., 2000).
The diffusion of Co, C and tungsten to the ferrous
work piece materials have been mentioned in the
literature (Pereira, et al., 2006). However, Gimenez
(Gimenez, et al., 2006) has found that WC-Co
substrate dissolves even under 700 °C when in
contact with iron, whereas PCBN composites are
chemically compatible with iron even up to 1000 °C
for 1 hour. Dawson, et al., 2001 has mentioned that
small amount of free ferrite in gray cast iron can
reduce PCBN tool life. Nevertheless, they concluded
in their work that small amounts of free ferrite is not
responsible for high wear rates in CGI machining.
The real mechanisms behind the high diffusion effect
in CGI machining with CBN has not been clarified
yet.
The chips from the CGI tests are longer and have
different colour than the chips from the two gray cast
irons. This means that the chips are less easily broken
due to the vermicular graphite shape of CGI. As
mentioned before, the flake graphites in conventional
gray cast iron contributes to the easy cracking path
and thereby shorter chips.
It is supposed that the low content of S in CGI
resulting in no MnS layer formation is not the only
reason for high diffusional interaction and associated
tool wear. The observations in terms of cladding on
the tool were similar for the gray cast iron 2 and the
CGI tested, although the former showed much less
wear. Thus, the short chip formation due to the
graphite flakes geometry and distribution is therefore
expected to be an important reason for chip-insert
contact time. Longer contact time in this context
means higher temperature in contact zone and then
larger degradation of the insert.
3.2 Surface Integrity of milled work piece materials
Milling with either HM or CBN inserts leads to
different conditions in the cutting zone. For the same
depth of cut, the latter kind of inserts can be run at
much higher cutting speed closer to adiabatic
conditions in the surface. This is also reflected in the
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microstructure development within the surface zone
of the work piece material during machining.
Milling with HM resulted in a plasticized layer below
the cut surface. This heat and deformation affected
layer can be observed the orientation of the matrix
and the graphites along the cutting direction, see
Figure 10 (a). The effect is almost similar for gray
cast iron 1 and gray cast iron 2. However, the layer is
thinner for CGI which means that the flow zone is
thinner, see Figure 10 (b). On top of the surface, the
white layer formed for gray cast iron 1 and gray cast
iron 2 is clearly observable and thicker than that
observed for CGI. Microhardness measurements,
Hv0.05 showed that this layer had a hardness of about
600-800 (kg/mm2). Two alternative explanations
exist. Either the layer is martensite or it is composed
of a zone experiencing mechanical grain refinement.
In both cases, significant hardness increase would
result. Further studies including detailed X-ray
diffraction studies and transmissions electron
microscopic studies would be need to clarify the
issue. However, the change in microstructure in the
surface results from the combination of high
deformation and heat. The thinner white layer for
CGI is then an evidence of a different chip formation
mechanism that is connected to different heat
distribution between the chip, insert and work piece
material.
(a) (b)
Fig. 10. Plasticized zone and microstructural change
at the surfaces of milled at 275 m/min for
gray cast iron 1(after 30 min.) CGI (after
26.14 min).
The same plasticized region and white band were not
observed on the surfaces that were cut by CBN
inserts. This resulted in a better and smoother surface
finish for CBN inserts, see Figure 11.
(a) (b)
Fig. 11. Machined surfaces with CBN inserts.
900 m/min, 30 minutes of cut for gray cast iron 1
(a) and 700 m/min, 8.08 minutes of cut for CGI
(b).
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4. CONCLUSIONS
The machinability of CGI was evaluated in
comparison to conventional gray cast irons with
graphite morphology ranging between CGI and
conventional gray cast iron structure. The summary
of this study can be outlined as follows:
Graphite morphology plays a significant role in the
chip formation mechanism. This is evidenced
from the banded seizure region (different chip
contact) of two gray cast irons with different
graphite characteristics.
It is supposed that the formation of MnS layer may
not be the only mechanism behind the difference
in machinability between the materials tested.
The tests showed only possible presence of MnS
clad on tool inserts for one of the gray cast irons,
while the other gray cast iron as well as the CGI
produced no such clad and still showed
significantly different machinability.
The thinner flow zone was observed for CGI cutting
compared to the gray cast irons pointing out
different heat distribution between the insert,
chip and work piece material.
The CBN inserts are robust and gave a better surface
finish and lower tool wear for gray cast irons but
did not work for CGI. The affinity between CGI
and CBN inserts resulted in high diffusion wear.
However, the reason for the high affinity
between CBN and CGI has not yet been
explained.
Besides such possible incompatibility, higher wear
was generally experienced also for the carbide
inserts when machining CGI. The vermicular
graphite morphology was here identified as an
important mechanism, leading to longer chips
and different chip formation mechanism with
potentially different heat impact on inserts.
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