PERFORMANCE OF UNCOATED AND COATED CARBIDE TOOLS IN TURNING FCD700 USING FEM SIMULATION

This paper presents investigations on the performance of uncoated and multi-layer coated carbide tools while turning ductile cast iron FCD700. Three different squares-edged carbide tools were used, namely TiN+TiCN+Al2O3+TiN-coated carbide tools, multi-layered hard coating of 5 and 10 mu m thickness and an uncoated WC/Co tool. Deform-3D FEM software is utilised to predict the main cutting force, the sliding velocity, interface temperature and interface pressure and tool wear rate on these inserts. The results show that the main cutting forces obtained with multi-layer carbide tools are smaller than the uncoated carbide tool. The simulated results for cutting forces were validated experimentally, and the maximum error between the simulation and experimental results is 8.14 %. It was found that the coated carbide tool with the highest thickness is the most suitable for turning ductile cast iron at higher cutting speeds.