Bluntness and wear of rolling disk cutters

Abstract A technique is proposed for determining bluntness and wear of rolling disk cutters. This technique involves making successive measurements of cutter diameter during cutting experiments and comparing them with the original cutter diameter. One half of the difference between these two values in millimeters is defined as bluntness. Further, wear indicator is defined as the increase in bluntness in millimeters due to abrasive wear or clip formation. Other cutter wear indicators, such as damage type and population, are presented and discussed. Cutter tip bluntness was found to have significant effects on muck weight, groove depth, groove width, chip size, fineness modulus, cutting coefficient, and specific energy. The results show that tip bluntness was one of the primary controlling factors in wear of the cutters.