The Impact of Tool Material and Cutting Parameters on Surface Roughness of a Nickel-Base Superalloy

The objective of the present work, is to assess the effect of tool material and cutting parameters on surface roughness of the supermet 718 Nickel-base superalloy, under dry cutting conditions and a constant nose radius (0.5 mm). The parameters investigated are cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut and tool material. The tool materials used were the ceramic (Sandvik CC 680) and the CBN (Sandvik CB 50) inserts. These variables were investigated using a 2^k factorial design.

The present work demonstrates a favorable effect for ceramic inserts on surface roughness, when compared with CBN inserts. The work also, showed that the feed rate has the dominant effect among the parameters studied on the surface roughness, irrespective of the tool material used.