Wear and performance of coated carbide and ceramic tools

Abstract The essential properties of modern high production cutting tools include high wear resistance, toughness, chemical stability at high temperature and under high sliding forces and a sufficiently high flow strength. It is difficult to achieve all these properties in a single tool material and techniques have been developed for coating a thin layer of a highly wear-resistant and friction-reducing material such as TiC, TiN, Ti(C,N), Al2O3 and Ti(C,N,O) onto a tough and strong substrate such as cemented carbides. The performance of such coated tools and their wear mechanisms were investigated.