The Effect of PVD and CVD Coating Structures on the Durability of Sintered Cutting Edges

In the work it was demonstrated that the exploitative stability of edges from tool ceramics and sintered carbides coated with gradient and multilayer PVD and CVD coatings depends mainly on the adherence of the coatings to the substrate, while the change of coating microhardness from 2300 to 3500 HV0.05, the size of grains and their thickness affect the durability of the edges to a lesser extent. It was found that some coatings showed a fine-grained structure. The coatings which contained the AlN phase with hexagonal lattice showed a considerably higher adhesion to the substrate from sialon ceramics rather than the coatings containing the TiN phase. Better adherence of the coatings containing the AlN phase with hexagonal lattice is connected with the same kind of interatomic bonds (covalent) in material of both coating and ceramic substrate. In the paper the exploitative properties of the investigated coatings in the technological cutting trials were also determined. The models of artificial neural network, which demonstrate a relationships between the edge stability and coating properties such as: critical load, microhardness, thickness and size of grains were worked out.