THE EFFECT OF THE DOUBLE-DECK FILAMENT SETUP ON ENHANCING THE UNIFORMITY OF TEMPERATURE FIELD ON LONG-FLUTE CUTTING TOOLS

Abstract

In the present study, a double-deck filament setup is proposed for the hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) method and an optimization method is presented to determine its optimal geometry that is able to produce a highly uniform temperature field on the whole flute surface of long-flute cutting tools. The optimization method is based on the finite volume method (FVM) simulation and the Taguchi method. The simulation results show that this double-deck filament setup always produce a highly uniform temperature distribution along the filament direction. Comparatively, for the temperature uniformity along the drill axis, the heights of the two filament decks present virtually significant influence, while the separations between the two filaments in either deck exhibit a relative weak effect. An optimized setup is obtained that can produce a highly uniform temperature field with an average temperature of 834°C, a standard deviation (σ) of 2.59°C and a temperature range (R) of 11.75°C. Finally, the precision of the proposed simulation method is verified by an additional temperature measurement. The measured temperature results show that a highly uniform temperature fields with σ/R = 9.6/35.2°C can be generated by the optimized setup and the deviation of the simulated results from the measured actual temperatures are within 0.5–3.5%, which justifies the correctness of the simulation method proposed in present study.