REPLACING GRINDING WITH HARD TURNING - A SOLUTION FOR GREEN MACHINING

The global competition forces the manufacturing industry players to permanently innovate, thus the pressure for eco-friendly and sustainable products arise. Once with the occurrence of novel geometries, materials and coatings for cutting tools as well as the development of high precision machine-tools hard turning has quickly become an important alternative for replacing grinding in many applications. The concerns for this solution have started about one decade ago and are applied in top-industries with a strong focus on competitiveness. This paper contains a systematic study of replacing grinding with hard turning which highlights the advantages, the challenges and some possible solutions to meet challenges, stresses the environment benefits of this phenomenon and provides quantitative models for determining the limits and conditions of using hard turning, incorporating both the relevant experiences presented in literature and the author's direct researches previously disseminated.