Metal cutting tools - latest trends

Metal cutting tooling technology is heavily dependent on manufacturing processes and isoften driven by manufacturing industry itself. Manufacturers are continually on the look-outfor lighter, but stronger metal cutting tool and this is what is driving the metal cutting toolindustry.

Given below is the look into current tooling emerging trends that can follow

Metal Cutting Tool Material TrendsFigure below shows cutting tool material in use in 1998

Source: Makino

As above pie chart portrays tools used in 1998, figure below shows the future trend that canemerge in coming years.

Source: Makino

From the pie chart, we can clearly see that CVD coated carbides has the maximum shareand PVD coated carbides shows the maximum growth. As high hardness and high lubricity

Metal cutting tools

Metal cutting tools - latest trends

coating technologies are the main driving forces to enable dry machining thus it is safe tosay that coating technology is the main driver force especially in the super –hard coatinglike Diamond and extremely lubricious coatings (MoS2).

Coating used on tools is the most important criterion that decides the quality of the tool, thus it is important to see advancement in tool coating as well. So let’s take cognizance of the various tools coating advancement that has happened in metal cutting tool industry.

Carbides: Development in carbide is more or less matured although progress is being madein binder enrichment techniques which increases cutting edge security.

Hard Coatings: CVD with 50% of marketing share is being slowly displaced by PVD, as itprovides ability to coat sharp edges.

cBN: cBN is seeing rapid advancements in ferrous machining and will provide productivitygain equivalent to Diamond provide for non-ferrous application.

Cermets: Development is being made in providing more resistance ability to the tool usingCermets. The new development will provide resistance to deformation and wear thathappens due to chemicals.

Ceramics: Development has been made in expanding Ceramics range from nickel-basealloys to cast irons and has already made advancement to iron work pieces from softmaterial work pieces.

The need to bring productivity in the machining process is very important. But the lack ofbasic fundamental understanding of metal behaviour has led to lot of frustration. There areseveral databases available which have extensive experimental data to provide guide inchoosing the right cutting condition. But with advancement in technology, these databasesare also getting obsolete pretty fast.

Another problem that industry is facing is slowness in updating their standards byinternational governing body such as ISO and ANSI. As per their last standard update, toolwear is caused due to flank or crater wear however none of it is true as many tools wear dueto back wall wear of the groove. These tool standard needs to be updated to reflect today’sworking conditions.

Metal cutting Manufacturing Industry Trends• Manufacturing will no longer be a core competency with emerging tool trends.

Skilled Manufacturing shops have already started to displace large establishedmanufacturing giants.

• Small startup can even challenge the big giants of manufacturing company due to

available advanced tooling technology, increasing competition and bringing down theprice for users.

Metal cutting tools

Metal cutting tools - latest trends

• Machine tools, machine tool controls, and cutting tools are advancing at the rate of

knots.

Hence current metal cutting trends clearly points towards getting more out of the tool andbring in more productivity. In that regard, more materials are being found which can providesuch rate of productivity. Future now only holds how successful the industry is in thisprocess.

Metal cutting tools