PERFORMANCE TEST OF CRYOGENICALLY TREATED AND

COATED TUNGSTEN CARBIDE CUTTING INSERTS

Y P Deepthi1,a*, K Prakash Marimuthu 1,b,
K 1Raghavendra Ravi Kiran1,c
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham , India
deepthi.prajna@gmail.com a, k_prakash@blr.amrita.edu b, kr_ravikiran@blr.amrita.educ

Key Words: Cryogenic treatment, multi-layer coating, orthogonal Array,

Regression model

Abstract

Production cost is dependent on the life of the Tool. Because of enormous heat generation
during the material removal process, life of the tool decreases. Tool life will be enhanced by
cryogenic treatment which minimises the temperature at tool tip interface. Taguchi
technique was employed to get optimum number of experiments for turning white cast iron
after the cryogenic treatment and before cryogenic treatment. The correlation between four
main factors such as speed, feed, depth of cut, tool condition and responses such as surface
roughness, tool tip temperature were analysed. Mathematical model was formulated for tool
tip temperature, and surface roughness. The error for the mathematically formulated model
was observed to be less than 5%.The present work indicates that cryogenically treated tool
have better surface finish . From the anova analysis it is inferred that tool tip temperature and
surface roughness substantially reduced while using cryogenically treated tool. It was
observed that cutting forces was more influenced by cutting speed of the tool followed by
tool condition. Hardness of the tool insert showed improvement because of coatings.

Introduction

Hard coatings have come a long way in improving the life of the tool. Coating of tools by
Physical vapour deposition is considerably increasing, primarily used to prevent the
separation of the coating from the base [1]. TiAlN based coating are very popular as it
reduces the operating cost by eliminating the use coolants, their disposal and chip disposal[2]
When TiN first applied by Physical Vapour Deposition(PVD) process on cemented carbide
cutting tools, they showed better performance in milling of steels prompting its use in other
machining applications, such as threading, grooving and parting, boring and turning. This
continuous success of PVD coated tools lead to commercial development of PVD coated
tools. Nowadays coating materials such as TiN, TiC, TiCN, TiAlN, ZrN and Al2O3 and their
combinations have been a great success. These coatings increase tool performance and life of
the tool by increasing its resistance to tool wear. TiCN is an excellent coating for adhesion
and basic cutting edge strength. Coated carbide provides better solution for metal working
industry and it is the alternate solution for most turning operations [3]. When these cutting
tools still further undergone cryogenic treatment they show longer life, better surface finish
and resistance to wear. Surface finish is the key element affecting the machining
characteristics. Good surface finish helps in reducing friction and wear, premature fatigue
failure, noise etc [4].Surface finish will be enhanced by cryogenic treatment. Cryogenic
treatment refers to the treatment of materials at around -183◦C using liquid Nitrogen which is
lesser than that used in cold treated which is around -96◦C. Tungsten carbide belongs to hard
wear resistance refractory material which makes it exceptionally suited for cutting tool,
wear, metal forming, rock drilling and mining applications [4]. Cryogenically treated inserts
show longer life than non treated tools. It is found that tool life of cryogenically treated p-30
tungsten carbide insert improved by 21.8% in deep cryogenically treated condition compared
to that of untreated condition [5]. M N Islam [6] concluded that precipitation and distribution
of η phase after cryogenic treatment improves wear resistance and slight increase in grain
size contributes to toughness. Yong et al [7] found that milling insert which were
cryogenically treated showed an increase from 28.9 to 38.6% of tool life. Seah et al [8]
implemented the cryogenic treatment on cobalt-bonded tungsten carbide (Co-WC) and
reported superior behaviour because the number of η-phase particles has been increased.
This helped in reducing transverse rupture strength hence improved resistance to chipping
and plastic deformation during cutting and lower toughness.
Stewart [9] applied turning test on cryogenically treated C2 WC insert (6% Co) and reported
reduction in tool wear. The author postulated that cryogenic treatment had effect on cobalt
binder by changing phase or crystal structure so that more cobalt binder was retained during
cutting. Gallagher et al [10] analyzed the microstructure alterations of α (tungsten carbide), β
(cobalt binder), γ (carbide of cubic lattice) and η (multiple carbides of tungsten and at least
one metal of the binder) phases within the tungsten carbide tools caused by the cryogenic
treatment and linked these changes to the corresponding enhanced tool life.
Simranpreet et al [5] suggested that tempering should follow cryogenic treatment to remove
stresses induced during treatment. The brittle martensite becomes tough and ductile after it is
tempered. Carbon atoms get trapped in the austenite when it is rapidly cooled, typically by
oil or water quenching, forming the martensite. The martensite becomes stronger after being
tempered because when reheated, the microstructure can rearrange and the carbon atoms can
diffuse out of the distorted body-centered-tetragonal (BCT) structure. After the carbon
diffuses, the result is nearly pure ferrite with body-centered structure.
Cryogenic treatment of coated tungsten carbide inserts on the cutting performance has been
explored to a certain extent, the effect of double tempering after cryogenic treatment has not
been reported. Also, the data pertaining to white cast iron is very scarce. Several factors
influence the surface finish of machined parts such as cutting conditions, geometry of the
tool, cutting fluid and chip formation [4].
The intent of the present work is to study the effect of major inputs parameters on surface
finish and temperature of cryogenically treated and double tempered WC coated tool inserts
on the turning of white cast iron.

Experimentation
Cryogenic treatment of tungsten carbide inserts

Instead of new tool material, secondary process such as surface coating is employed to
enhance tool life [6]. The cutting tool was coated with a combination of TiN+TiCN+Al2O3
manufactured by Kyocera .TiN coating applied on substrate because of its excellent lubricant
properties and corrosion resistance[10]. Surface treatments such as cryogenic treatment are
performed on that coated inserts. The thermal cycle was adopted[11]. The inserts were
cooled to -180 °C, soaked at this temperature for 24 hours, heated to room temperature
within 5 hours, heated to 180° C in 4 hours, cooled to room temperature within 4 hours for
once tempering. The last part is repeated for double tempering. A dry process in which the
materials being treated are not exposed to the liquid Nitrogen was employed. This is done to
eliminate the risk of damage created due to thermal shock [5].
Stratton [12] concluded to avoid cracking it is important to cool and reheat slowly through
differential contraction/expansion and the effects of the 4% volume change on
transformation of retained austenite to martensite.
Huang et al. [13] performed microstructural analysis of cryogenically treated M2 tool steel
and confirmed that cryogenic treatment facilitates the carbide formation. It also makes
carbide distribution more homogeneous.

Materials and Process

The experiments are conducted on white cast iron using coated tungsten carbide inserts
under three conditions namely cryogenically treated then double tempered, cryogenically
treated and nontreated tool. Taguchi Design of experiments was used to design the optimum
number of experiments. The total number of experiments conducted were 36.

Results and discussions

Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) for different factors

The details of cutting conditions such as cutting speed, feed, depth of cut and tool
condition were shown in the Table 3. ANOVA was performed on temperature, surface
roughness and the results are tabulated below in Table 4 and Table 5 respectively.
Results showed that coated and cryogenically treated tool performed well than the
uncoated tool.
List of Cutting Parameters
Table 3
Input Symbol Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
parameters
Cutting A 63 160 220
speed
Feed B 0.1 0.15
Depth of C 1 2
cut
Tool
D NT CT CTT
condition

Anova for Temperature

Table 4
Factor DOF SS MSS P%
=SS/DOF =SS/SST
A 2 3.32 1.66 53.89%
B 1 0.44 0.44 7.22%
C 1 0.00 0.00 0.07%
D 2 0.75 0.38 12.20%
AB 2 0.07 0.03 1.12%
BC 2 0.00 0.00 0.02%
AD 4 0.15 0.04 2.46%
BD 2 0.07 0.04 1.20%
 CD 2 0.07 0.04 1.20%
AC 2 0.07 0.03 1.12%
Error 15 1.20 0.08 19.50%
Total 35 6.15 100.00%

It shows that cutting speed has significant effect on Tool Tip Temperature with a
contribution of p=53.89% followed by Tool condition of p= 12.20% and feed rate of
p=7.22%.The interaction between cutting speed and feed rate contributed a value of
p=1.12%, whereas cutting speed and tool condition contributed to p=2.46%. The total
contribution of main effects are 73.39% where as the total contribution of interaction effects
are 7.12%. Therefore it is possible to optimize the tool tip temperature by selection of the
input parameters.
Anova for Surface roughness
Table 5
Factor DOF SS MSS P%
=SS/DOF =SS/SST
A 2 3.32 1.66 53.89%
B 1 0.44 0.44 7.22%
C 1 0.00 0.00 0.07%
D 2 0.75 0.38 12.20%
AB 2 0.07 0.03 1.12%
BC 2 0.00 0.00 0.02%
AD 4 0.15 0.04 2.46%
BD 2 0.07 0.04 1.20%
CD 2 0.07 0.04 1.20%
AC 2 0.07 0.03 1.12%
Error 15 1.20 0.08 19.50%
Total 35 6.15 100.00%

It shows that depth of cut has significant effect on surface roughness with a contribution of
p=53.89% followed by tool condition contribution of p=12.2% and feed rate contribution of
p=7.22%.The interaction between cutting speed and tool condition contributed a value of
p=2.46% and remaining interaction effect are very less. The total contribution of main effects
is 73.39% where as the total contribution of interaction effects are 7.12%. Therefore it is
understood that surface roughness can be optimized by selection of the proper cutting speed
of the cryogenically treated tool. Regression models for cryogenically treated tool(CT),
cryogenically treated and tempered tool (CTT)for surface roughness are Y=3.3-
0.004X1+0.04X2+4.7X3 and Y=3.31-0.004X1+0.009X2+4.70X3 respectively. It was
observed that difference between experimental data and theoretical data is less than 4%.

Conclusion

In this work three different types of tools were used and the tool which underwent
cryogenic treatment showed better performance in terms of tool life and surface finish it
produced. Mathematical model results showed good agreement with the results. Statistical
methods are used to determine the parameters that effect the surface roughness and tool tip
temperature. Cutting speed has more influence on the tool tip temperature. Optimization of
cutting parameters was achieved
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