A Study of Factors That Affect the Build-Up Material Formation

A feature when cutting many alloys is that workpiece material adheres to the cutting tool at the sliding contact surfaces, between the work material and the tool. This built-up material formed during cutting is of fundamental importance in machining operations, because it may significantly affect the surface roughness, tool wear, workpiece dimensions and tolerances, tool forces, and chip form. The agglomeration of the work material to the tool appears to be analogous to cold welding, metal transfer in tribology and dead zone in extrusion. In machining terminology this phenomenon is often called “built-up edge” (BUE). Several important factors affect the built-up material formation, e.g. cutting temperature, cutting speed, strain hardening, adhesion between the work material and the tool, micro-crack formation, plastic flow of the work material in the vicinity of the cutting edge, etc.