Experimental study of the wear behavior of PCBN inserts during cutting of GH4169 superalloys under high-pressure cooling

Serious tool wear and poor chip breaking are the major issues in cutting process of superalloys under normal-pressure cooling. Towards those issues, this paper proposed an experimental evaluation on cutting tool wear of polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (PCBN) in machining of GH4169, a nickel-based superalloys, under high-pressure cooling. The several level pressures of coolant are tested, and then the rake face and flank wear of cutting tool are studied, as well as the cutting forces and the chips. These research result shows that the high-pressure coolant can reduce the wear value VB of inserts flank and the cutting force and is advantageous to chip breaking. Therefore, the machinability of nickel-based superalloys GH4169 can be improved by the high-pressure cooling.