A comparison of the performance of various indexable carbide inserts for machining stainless steel

Stainless steel materials play an extremely important role in today\u27s industry. Machining of stainless steel materials generally results in short tool lives and limited metal removal rates. Hence it is very important to find the cutting inserts with better performance and the ranges of machining parameters where these inserts can productively and efficiently machine stainless steel. This research is focused on the evaluation of six commercial Indexable carbide inserts recommended for Stainless steel machining. The study examined tool wear and degradation, cutting forces, surface finish produced, machining temperatures, and chip characteristics for the inserts while machining precipitation hardened Stainless Steel. The purpose of the study was to observe if there are any notable differences among the commercial inserts in terms of their performance. The hypothesis of this thesis is that there are variations in the performance of the cutting inserts with identical nominal geometry and similar coatings and these differences arise because of subtle manufacturing dissimilarities. Furthermore, in this research dry machining has been employed, thus investigating the effects of eliminating liquid lubricants and the environmental concerns raised by them