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Materials and Manufacturing Processes

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Influence of Heat Treatment on the Machinability of

Titanium Alloys
a b a a b a
M. Armendia , P. Osborne , A. Garay , J. Belloso , S. Turner & P.-J. Arrazola
a
Mondragon Unibertsitatea – Faculty of Engineering , Mondragón , Gipuzkoa , Spain
b
Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre , Rotherham , England , UK
Accepted author version posted online: 26 Jul 2011.Published online: 14 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: M. Armendia , P. Osborne , A. Garay , J. Belloso , S. Turner & P.-J. Arrazola (2012) Influence of
Heat Treatment on the Machinability of Titanium Alloys, Materials and Manufacturing Processes, 27:4, 457-461, DOI:
10.1080/10426914.2011.585499

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 Materials and Manufacturing Processes, 27: 457–461, 2012
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1042-6914 print=1532-2475 online
DOI: 10.1080/10426914.2011.585499

Influence of Heat Treatment on the Machinability of Titanium Alloys

M. Armendia1, P. Osborne2, A. Garay1, J. Belloso1, S. Turner2, and P.-J. Arrazola1
1
Mondragon Unibertsitatea – Faculty of Engineering, Mondragón, Gipuzkoa, Spain
2
Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, Rotherham, England, UK

Orthogonal cutting force measurements and single-point tool life tests were conducted in order to analyze the sensitivity to heat treatment
on the machinability of three titanium alloys: Ti6Al4V, Ti-5Al-4V-0.6Mo-0.4Fe (TIMETAL1 54M), and Ti6246. The Ti6246 alloy showed
the highest tool wear rates and the higher cutting forces in all the heat treatment conditions which could be related to its higher mechanical
properties. TIMETAL1 54M alloy, a newly developed alloy with similar mechanical properties to the more commonly used Ti6Al4V,
showed the lowest wear rates. Microstructural changes due to heat treatment have some influence in the machinability of the alloys. The
b annealed samples of the Ti6Al4V and TIMETAL1 54M alloys, with a very coarse lamellar microstructure, showed considerably shorter
Downloaded by [North Dakota State University] at 10:52 13 October 2014

tool life and higher cutting forces. The rest of the heat treatments showed no significant influence in the machining behavior of the analyzed
alloys as they do not cause important microstructural changes.

Keywords Annealing; Machinability; Microstructure; Productivity; Ti54M; Ti6246; Ti6Al4V; Titanium.

INTRODUCTION cut) with uncoated carbide tools. Hughes et al. [4]

Titanium alloys are now increasingly popular in the
aerospace sector due to their excellent corrosion resist-
ance, high strength-to-weight ratio, and high strength
at elevated temperatures. In addition, titanium is replac-
ing aluminium in many aircraft applications as the latter
forms a galvanic pair with the increasingly used Carbon
Fibre Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) components [1]. How-
ever, it is well known that titanium alloys are difficult
to machine when compared with other structural materi-
als like aluminium and most steels. Their low thermal
conductivity, high strength even at high temperatures,
high chemical reactivity with tool materials, and their
low elastic modulus are the reasons for this poor machin-
ability [2]. To overcome these machining difficulties and
improve the productivity of titanium alloy components,
a big effort is being performed in the different areas that
affect machinability: workpiece material, tool material
and geometry, cutting conditions, etc. The aim of this
research work is to understand how the machining per-
formance can be improved by modifying the workpiece
material, specifically, its microstructure. To do that, the
machinability of 3 different a þb titanium alloys
(Ti6Al4V, TIMETAL1 54M and Ti6246) is analyzed.
Ti6Al4V is the most commonly used of the titanium
alloys, accounting for approximately 50% of the titanium
alloy consumption in the aerospace sector. Arrazola et al.
[3] reported that a maximum cutting speed of 80 m
min1
was established for 15 minutes of tool life in roughing
conditions (0.1 mm
rev1 feed rate and 2 mm depth of
Received February 7, 2011; Accepted April 14, 2011
Address correspondence to M. Armendia, Mechanical and
Manufacturing Department, Mondragon Unibertsitatea – Faculty of
Engineering, Loramendi Kalea 4 20500, Gipuzkoa, Spain; E-mail:
marmendia@eps.mondragon.edu;, mikelarmendia@hotmail.com
machined this material with round carbide inserts at
60 m
min1 (0.25 mm
rev1 feed rate and 2 mm depth
of cut) and obtained a tool life of over 50 minutes.
Ramesh et al. [5] obtained a tool life of around 20 minutes
machining this alloy using PCD inserts in dry cutting
conditions with a cutting speed of 70 m
min1,
0.22 mm
rev1 feed rate, and 1 mm depth of cut.
Ti-5Al-4V-0.6Mo-0.4Fe (TIMETAL1 54 M, it will be
referred as Ti54M through the text) alloy is an a þb alloy
with similar mechanical properties to the Ti6Al4V alloy.
Ti54M alloy has been shown to provide cost savings
due to its better machinability when compared to the
Ti6Al4V alloy [6]. Arrazola et al. [7] confirmed the
expected better machinability of this alloy when com-
pared to Ti6Al4V, with a maximum cutting speed of
90 m
min1 for 15 minutes of machining time. They
attributed this better behavior to the different micro-
structure of the studied samples. Similarly, Kosaka
et al. [8] conducted drilling tests in both Ti6Al4V and
Ti54M alloys in different heat treatment conditions. In
their tests the Ti54M alloy showed better machinability
than the Ti6Al4V in all the heat treatment conditions.
When the different heat treatments are compared the b
and recrystallization annealed workpieces were the most
difficult to drill.
Ti6246 is another a þ b alloy which can be heat treated
to high strengths (yield stress in excess to 1200 MPa) and
higher sections than Ti6Al4V. This good response to heat
treatment and the lack of martensite transformation after
rapid cooling indicate that it should be classified as a b
alloy [1]. The machinability of the Ti6246 alloy is poorer
than that of the Ti6Al4V alloy. Jawaid et al. [9] carried
out turning tests on Ti6246 alloy with two uncoated
cemented carbides with different grain sizes. A tool life
of 12 minutes was achieved with the small grain sized tool

457
 458 M. ARMENDIA ET AL.

with a cutting speed of 60 m
min1 and a feed rate of TABLE 2.—Details of the heat treatments applied to each of
0.25 mm
rev1. the alloys tested
These three alloys will be heat treated with different Annealing Annealing
annealing techniques to study the influence of the conse- temperature ( C) time (h) Cooling
quent microstructural changes. The effect of these
changes in the machining behavior will allow establishing Ti6Al4V
Mill annealed 700 5 Air
the best heat treatment condition to machine each alloy
b annealed 1050 1 Air
and to define the microstructural features to obtain Duplex annealed
new alloys with better machinability. Single point turn- 1st step 954 1 Air
ing tests will be performed to compare the machining 2nd step 677 5 Air
performance of each alloy=heat treatment pair. In Ti54M
addition, forces will be measured during orthogonal cut- Mill annealed 700 8 Air
ting of the different samples to apply the Cutting Force b annealed 1025 1 Air
Coefficient (CFC) theory and gain a better understand- Duplex annealed
ing of the machining performance of each alloy=heat 1st step 935 1 Air
treatment pair. 2nd step 677 8 Air
Ti6246
Mill annealed 700 8 Air
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EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
Workpiece Materials and Heat Treatments
Table 1 shows the composition and the b transus tem- Tool Life Tests
perature of the Ti6Al4V, Ti54M, and Ti6246 alloys. For Single-point turning tests were carried out on a CIN-
each alloy, 1 meter long and 250 mm diameter as forged CINNATI HAWK lathe to perform tool life tests. A feed
bars were received. The forging step consisted in a b rate of 0.1 mm
rev1 and a depth of cut of 2 mm were
ingot breakdown, followed by a=b processing to final selected and conventional cooling was used. For each
size. alloy, preliminary tool wear tests were performed to
For the Ti6Al4V and Ti54M alloys, three samples were obtain the maximum cutting speed at which a cutting time
cut from the as forged bar and sent to receive different of at least 15 minutes is achieved [3, 7]. The correspondent
heat treatments (mill annealing, b annealing and duplex maximum cutting speed of each alloy is applied in the tool
annealing) at Timet while the last one remained life tests to analyze the influence of heat treatment.
untreated. In the case of the Ti6246 alloy, only a mill SANDVIK CNMG 120408-23 H13A uncoated car-
annealing heat treatment has been followed. Table 2 bide inserts were mounted in a SANDVIK C5-DCLNL-
summarizes the details of the performed heat treatments. 35060-12 tool holder, which provided an effective
A Leica DM IRM optical microscope has been used to
study the microstructure of the three alloys in the corre-
spondent heat treatment conditions (Fig. 1). In the as
forged state, they show a bi-modal microstructure com-
posed by a primary (white grains) and transformed b with
acicular a (dark zones). Comparing to the Ti6Al4V alloy,
big a grains (20 mm) taking most of the volume, Ti54M
presents smaller a primary grains (10–15 mm) that lead
to smaller general grain size. In the case of the Ti6246
alloy, the a primary grain size is even smaller (5–10 mm).
When applying the mill annealing and duplex annealing
(only Ti54M and Ti6Al4V alloys) no significant micro-
structure variation has been noticed comparing to the
as forged samples. However, totally lamellar microstruc-
tures with very big grain size (  1 mm) were formed after
b annealing of the Ti6Al4V and Ti54M alloy.

TABLE 1.—Composition and b transus temperature

for the tested titanium alloys.

Composition
Titanium Transus
alloy Al V Mo Fe St Zr b ( C)

Ti6Al4 V 6 4 – – – – 996
Ti54 M 5 4 0.6 0.4 – – 950
Ti6246 6 – 6 – 2 4 935
FIGURE 1.—Microstructure of the studied samples.
 INFLUENCE OF HEAT TREATMENT ON TITANIUM ALLOYS
clearance angle of 6 and a rake angle of 7 . A fresh
cutting edge was used for each test. Due to the impor-
tance of cutting edge radius in cutting forces [10], this
parameter has been controlled using a white light inter-
ferometer and only the cutting edges with a value within
35  5 mm have been used. The tool rejection criterion
was 0.25 mm for the average flank wear (VB) and
0.5 mm for the maximum flank wear (VBmax).
CFC
A KISTLER 9121 dynamometer was installed on the
lathe to measure the cutting forces. In this case, orthog-
onal cutting tests were performed by machining a 5 mm
thickness and 120 mm diameter tube that was previously
prepared on each workpiece. SANDVIK TCMT
16T308-KM H13A carbide inserts were used and
mounted in a modified holder which was ground such
that they were presented to the work-piece with a 90
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entering angle. These inserts provide a geometry with a
clearance and rake angle of 7 , almost equal to the one
used previously in the tool life tests. Again, a fresh cut-
ting edge was used for each test. In this stage, the feed
rate was varied (0.1, 0.15, 0.2, and 0.25 mm
rev1) and
cutting speed was maintained constant at 40 m
min1
to avoid premature wear with the higher feed rates. Each
test was repeated, at least, twice (uncertainty: 3%).
CFCs contain information about the material hard-
ness, tool rake angle, and friction between chip and
the tool and are used in the prediction of cutting forces,
torque, power, and chatter stability limits. Oxley estab-
lished a model by which the cutting forces measured in
orthogonal cutting can be divided into the shear or
cutting and edge components [11]:
Tangentialforce : Ft ¼ Ftc þ Fte ¼ Ktc bf þ Kte b
Feedforce : Ff ¼ Ffc þ Ffe ¼ Kfc bf þ Kfe b
where b is the depth of cut, f the feed rate, Ktc and Kfc
the tangential and feed cutting coefficients, and Kte
and Kfe are the tangential and feed edge coefficients,
respectively.
FIGURE 3.—Average flank wear from the tool life tests for the studied alloys at its correspondent cutting speed (f ¼ 0.1 mm
rev1, aP ¼ 2 mm).
459
FIGURE 2.—Average flank wear after 15 minutes of machining time for the
three alloys in the as forged condition (f ¼ 0.1 mm
rev1; aP ¼ 2 mm).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Tool Life
Comparison between the three alloys. Figure 2 shows
the results of the preliminary cutting tests performed to
obtain the maximum cutting speed for the studied alloys
in the as forged condition.
The data shows that the Ti6246 has the poorest machin-
ability, with a maximum cutting speed of 60 m
min1.
For the other two alloys, Ti54M shows a better perfor-
mance with a maximum cutting speed of 90 m
min1,
while the Ti6Al4V alloy can only be machined at
80 m
min1 for 15 minutes. It implies an improvement
of about 20% in the machinability rate of the Ti54M alloy
when compared to the Ti6Al4V. These results confirm
those reported by Arrazola et al. [7].
Influence of the heat treatment. Figure 3 shows the
ð1Þ measured average flank wear from tool life tests for each
of the studied alloys at the different heat treatment con-
ð2Þ ditions and at the correspondent maximum cutting
speed. For the Ti6Al4V and Ti54M alloys, tool life in
the b annealed condition was considerably lower. The
same conclusion was achieved by Kosaka and Fox [8]
who stated that the higher b grain size of the laminar
microstructure created after b annealing is more difficult
 460
FIGURE 4.—Cutting (a) and feed (b) forces for Ti6Al4V, Ti54M and Ti6246 alloys in the as forged condition (vc ¼ 40 m
min1, aP ¼ 5 mm).
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to shear, leading to higher cutting forces and decreasing
tool life.
The machining of the mill and duplex annealed sam-
ples of each alloy do not show variations with respect
to the as forged condition. This observation is in line with
the unappreciable microstructural differences of both
Ti6Al4V and Ti54M alloys in these three heat treatment
conditions. In the machining of the Ti6246 alloy, the heat
treatment does not seem to have a significant influence.
Cutting Forces
Comparison between the studied alloys. Figure 4 shows
the measured cutting forces for the tested alloys in the as
forged condition. For each alloy, the trend lines and its
equation have been plotted. The behavior of the three
alloys is repeated in the rest of heat treatment conditions.
The Ti6246 alloy recorded the highest cutting forces.
This agrees with the higher mechanical properties of this
alloy when compared with Ti6Al4V and Ti54M.
The Ti54M alloy shows lower cutting and feed forces
than Ti6Al4V at the lower feed rates, which agrees with
FIGURE 5.—Cutting forces for Ti6Al4 V, Ti54 M, and Ti6246 in the four heat-treatment conditions (vc ¼ 40 m
min1, aP ¼ 5 mm).
M. ARMENDIA ET AL.
its expected improved machinability and the results
obtained previously by the authors [7] at 0.1 mm
rev1
of feed rate. However, when increasing feed rate, the
raise in cutting and feed force is bigger for the Ti54M
alloy (larger slope in Fig. 4(a,b)) and for the higher feed
rates cutting forces exceed those of the Ti6Al4V. This
behavior is consistent across all the heat treatments, only
changing the intersection position of the lines of best fit.
The larger gradient of the line (cutting coefficients -
Ktc, Kfc) for the Ti54M alloy is an indicator of the higher
shear stress required to machine this alloy. However, a
comparison of the edge coefficients (Kte, Kfe) shows con-
siderably lower values for the Ti54M alloy. As the edge
coefficients are related to flank contact and friction, it
seems that there may be a smaller friction component
in the machining of the Ti54M alloy, leading to reduced
cutting temperatures. The high temperatures and the
unfavorable distributions in the contact zone are the
main problem in the machining of titanium alloys, mak-
ing diffusion the main wear mechanism [12]. In this case,
it seems that tool wear is reduced in the Ti54M alloy due
to the lower friction and rubbing effects and, hence,
 INFLUENCE OF HEAT TREATMENT ON TITANIUM ALLOYS
lower temperatures. In fact, this phenomenon is
confirmed with the lower wear rates obtained in the
machining of this alloy in the tool life analysis tests.
Influence of heat treatment. Figure 5 shows the vari-
ation of the cutting and feed forces with feed rate for the
studied alloys in the 4 different heat treatment con-
ditions. For the Ti6Al4V and Ti54M alloys, the b
annealing samples showed the highest force values with
a bigger influence in the feed forces. The rest of heat
treatment conditions (as-forged, and mill and duplex
annealing) do not show significant differences. These
results agree with the ones observed at the tool life tests
and with observations made at the microstructural char-
acterization step where only the b annealed samples
showed significant variations. Regarding the Ti6246
alloy, cutting and feed forces decrease after applying
the mill annealing technique.
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CONCLUSIONS
From the performed experimental work, the following
conclusions can be drawn:
1. The Ti6246 alloy shows the higher cutting force
values and the shortest tool life of the tested material.
These results agree with the higher mechanical
properties of this alloy when compared to Ti6Al4V
and TIMETAL154 M alloy.
2. The new TIMETAL154 M alloy shows a better
performance than the most common Ti6Al4V with
a 20% higher maximum allowable cutting speed to
achieve 15 minutes of tool life. The application of
this new alloy replacing the most applied Ti6Al4V
will have a huge impact in aerospace sector due to
cost savings in machining processes.
3. Due to the similar mechanical properties of the
Ti6Al4V and TIMETAL154 M alloys, the much
finer microstructure of the latter is the reason of
the observed machinability difference.
4. Coarse microstructures, like the one obtained after b
annealing, provide the worse machining behavior.
Lower tool life and higher cutting and feed forces
have been observed in the machining of the samples
treated with this technique. When the application of
components in this state is required, heat treatment
should be performed after the machining step.
5. CFC analysis has allowed distinguishing cutting and
edge effects in the machining of these alloys. Even if
absolute cutting force values are smaller for a certain
461
alloy, a higher edge effect can lead to higher cutting
temperatures, and hence, tool wear can be accelerated.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Roger Thomas from
Timet UK and Steve Weston from Sandvik UK for their
help providing technical, material, and tooling support
to this study.
The authors would also like to thank the Basque
Government for the Research Grant BFI07.91.
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