Wear and Durability Variation Compared with Thickness of Cutting Inserts Coated with AlTiN Thin Films

During the use of cutting tools in the cutting process, they lose their exploitation indices after a certain range of working, due to the occurrence of wear phenomenon. Wear occurs due to the parameters variation of the working regimes, fact that involves in order to not overcoming the limits of the maximum allowable wear, application of methods, to increase their durability. In order to increase the cutting tools durability are known various methods of surface coating with materials with better properties than the material of the cutting tool. In the case of cutting inserts, are known many researches concerning their coating by vacuum deposition of thin layers of metal, methods as: physical vapour deposition and chemical vapour deposition. The coatings realized by vacuum deposition have gained special attention because of their unique physical and chemical properties for example excellent resistance to oxidation at high temperatures. The main characteristics which are checked in the deposition process of thin layers are: thickness and the wear resistance. In this study the authors carried out researches regarding the coatings of AlTiN in thin layers, on surface of some cutting inserts. It was measured the variation of the wear and durability compared with the thickness of AlTiN thin layers deposited on the cutting inserts. (paper)