Experimental Study of the Minimum Chip Thickness during the Machining of Duplex Stainless Steel

During a machining operation the workpiece material at some point has to split up into two separate material flows forming the chip and machined surface respectively. In the boundary zone between these two different flows of material it is possible to distinguish a stagnation point. This stagnation point is closely related to the minimum chip thickness h1min. The size of h1min is of great interest due to how it describes the material flow into the machined surface and thus giving information on the workpiece surface deformation. The goal of this study has been to find a method to experimentally measure the size of h1min and to investigate how this variable changes with different process parameters such as cutting data and tool edge geometries. The obtained results show that h1min in several cases may be as large as 40% of the theoretical chip thickness h1 when machining duplex stainless steel. (Less)