Mirror Surface Machining of Steel by Elliptical Vibration Cutting with Diamond-Coated Tools Sharpened by Pulse Laser Grinding

Abstract

Low-cost mirror surface machining of die steel is proposed in this research by applying elliptical vibration cutting with diamond-coated tools sharpened by pulse laser grinding (PLG). It is well known that conventional diamond cutting cannot be applied to die steel owing to rapid tool wear. Several attempts have been reported to prevent rapid tool wear, such as using ultrasonic elliptical vibration cutting. The ultrasonic elliptical vibration cutting developed by the authors to achieve mirror surface finish on die steel and prevent rapid wear is widely used in the industry. However, high-cost single-crystalline diamond tools that are finished using a time-consuming lapping process are required to obtain mirror surfaces. The authors, meanwhile, have recently developed the PLG process to efficiently sharpen the cutting edges of hard tool materials such as cubic boron nitride. Therefore, a practical mirror surface machining method for die steel is proposed in this research, namely elliptical vibration cutting with low-cost diamond-coated tools sharpened by the efficient PLG process. The results of the machining experiments confirmed that practical mirror surface machining of die steel can be achieved by the proposed method.