When choosing aluminum alloy cutting knife materials, how to consider the cutting characteristics of aluminum alloy?
Publish Time: 2025-03-10
As a lightweight and high-strength metal material, aluminum alloy is widely used in aerospace, automobile manufacturing, electronic communications and other fields. However, the cutting of aluminum alloy faces a series of challenges, such as easy sticking of the knife, easy generation of built-up edge, high cutting surface roughness and other problems. Therefore, when choosing aluminum alloy cutting knife materials, the cutting characteristics of aluminum alloy must be fully considered to ensure efficient and high-quality cutting.
The cutting characteristics of aluminum alloy mainly include the following aspects:
1. Low strength and low hardness
The strength and hardness of aluminum alloy are relatively low, which makes it easy to deform during the cutting process and causes less wear on the tool. However, this also means that the tool needs to maintain sufficient sharpness to ensure the smooth progress of the cutting process. Therefore, when choosing cutting knife materials, priority should be given to materials that can maintain sharpness for a long time, such as cemented carbide, high-speed steel, etc.
2. High plasticity and easy to stick to the tool
Aluminum alloy is prone to plastic deformation during the cutting process, and due to its low melting point, the plasticity increases at high temperature, and it is easy to stick to the tool to form a built-up edge. The built-up edge not only affects the quality of the cutting surface, but also aggravates the wear of the tool. Therefore, when selecting the cutting tool material, those materials that are not easy to chemically react with aluminum alloy and not easy to stick to the tool should be considered. For example, the surface of the cemented carbide tool can be coated with titanium nitride or diamond coating to reduce the friction coefficient and reduce the sticking phenomenon.
3. Good thermal conductivity
Aluminum alloy has good thermal conductivity, and the heat generated during the cutting process is easily dissipated through the workpiece and chips. This feature makes aluminum alloy suitable for high-speed cutting, but it also requires the tool to have good heat dissipation capacity. Therefore, when selecting the cutting tool material, attention should be paid to its thermal stability and thermal conductivity to ensure that the tool will not fail due to overheating during high-speed cutting.
Based on the above cutting characteristics, we can draw the following suggestions for selecting aluminum alloy cutting knife materials:
Carbide tools: Carbide tools have the advantages of high hardness, good wear resistance, and strong thermal stability, which are very suitable for high-speed cutting of aluminum alloys. In addition, carbide tools can also be coated with different types of coatings to improve their cutting performance, such as titanium nitride coatings can reduce the friction coefficient, and diamond coatings can improve the durability of the tool.
High-speed steel tools: High-speed steel tools have good toughness, are easy to grind and regrind, and are suitable for some aluminum alloy processing occasions that do not require high cutting speeds. However, due to its relatively low hardness, it is easy to wear during high-speed cutting, so special attention should be paid to the selection of cutting amount when using it.
Polycrystalline diamond (PCD) tools: PCD tools have extremely high hardness and wear resistance, and are ideal for cutting aluminum alloys. However, due to its high cost, it is usually only used in occasions with extremely high requirements for cutting surface quality.
In summary, when selecting aluminum alloy cutting knife materials, the cutting characteristics of aluminum alloys must be fully considered, and reasonable choices must be made in combination with specific processing requirements and cost budgets. By selecting the appropriate cutting tool material, the efficiency and quality of aluminum alloy cutting can be significantly improved.
