Laser Ablation & Laser Metal Deposition
Ceramic Tools Adapted to Workpiece Material
The project involves the investigation, optimisation and production of ceramic tools for machining metallic materials. The special feature of the tools developed in the project is their robustness and long service life compared to currently available ceramic tools, which often fail unexpectedly quickly and react very sensitively to high thermal gradients. The cutting parameter window is greatly expanded and thus the new ceramic tools will be able to be used in a similarly broad range as carbide tools today.
The Project currently involves two use cases, each requiring the opimisation of tool material, cutting edge geometry as well as process paramters
- Use case "watch blanks made of lead-free brass”:
The focus here is on the service life of so-called driver tools. If the service life of 15000 blanks is exceeded and proof of the process capability of ceramic tooling is provided, the watch manufacturer will replace its entire carbide tooling range with ceramic tooling. This means that ceramic cutting materials should enable high-quality machining (high surface quality), which is currently not possible with carbide tools according to the state of the art. In addition, the tool life or the cutting volume should be increased by at least a factor of 2 compared to the current process with carbide tools with a tool diameter of 0.5 mm. - Use Case "Moulding tools for sanitary engineering".
A manufacturer of power tools wants to mill moulding tools made of CrMo tempering steel (hardness 48 HRC) mainly with laser-optimised ceramic tools on the basis of the findings from the preliminary project. Two new milling centres with high-speed spindles (30,000 rpm) were purchased for this purpose. Up to 80 workpieces are clamped on clamping towers for milling. The focus here is on high metal removal rates, for which ceramic tools are predestined. In this case, an increase in cutting performance (tool breakage is the abort criterion) by at least a factor of 2.5 compared to the current process with carbide tools at a tool diameter of 5 mm is to be demonstrated. The tool life must not decrease compared to the milling process with carbide tools according to the current status
Contact: Yves Locher