Wear resistance of carbide tools with textured flank-face in dry cutting of green alumina ceramics

Green ceramics are the ceramic compacts before sintering, and there is no metallurgical bonding force between the powder particles. Therefore, it can be machined by traditional mechanical processing. Machining of green ceramics represents an alternative way to other shaping process, and offers a high degree of flexibility and economic efficiency for the machining of ceramic parts. In this paper, surface texturing with different geometrical characteristics was made on the flank face of the WC/Co carbide tools. Dry cutting tests on the green alumina ceramics were carried out with these flank-face textured tools and a conventional WC/Co carbide tool, the wear resistance of these flank-face textured tools was investigated. Results showed that there was only mild wear on the rake face, while flank face revealed serious abrasive wear. The flank wear of the flank-face textured tools was significantly reduced compared with that of the conventional one, and the flank-face textured tools with micro-scale grooves on the flank face parallel to the main cutting edge (AT-1) had the most improved flank wear resistance. Mechanism responsible was found that the textures on the flank face exhibited derivative-cutting phenomenon during dry cutting of green alumina ceramics, which served as the removal of hard inclusion between the tool-workpiece interface. The derivative-cutting was found to be beneficial to the decrease of the flank wear of the flank-face textured tools. The textures on the flank faces can also be acted as storage for powder chip which can protect the texture groove from abrasion. Textures on flank face had no obvious effect on the roughness of machined green alumina ceramic surfaces. •WC/Co carbide tools with and without textured flank-face were made.•The wear resistance of tools with textured flank-face was improved.•The tools with grooves parallel to the main cutting edge were the most effective.•Textures on the flank face exhibited derivative-cutting phenomenon.•Derivative-cutting was beneficial to the decrease of flank wear of textured tools.