Donald M. Mattox Tutorial Program Twenty-Five Years of PVD Coatings at the Cutting Edge

摘要

The commercial acceptance of hard coatings for cutting tools is driven by demands on machining productivity, environmental mandates, and increased usage of new difficult-to-cut materials. Improved cutting performance is derived from synergies of machine tool system and cutting tool development. The latter strives for an optimized combination of tool material, hard coating and cutting edge geometry. The ongoing competition between classic thermal CVD and PVD hard coating technologies for tools is briefly surveyed. Although the understanding of microscopic phenomena controlling the tribology at the cutting edge is still qualitative, the materials science of PVD coatings teaches some guidelines on the optimum choice of properties for given metal cutting conditions. Some illustrations of successful PVD coated tool applications are highlighted.