Atmospheric pressure plasma-assisted precision turning of pure iron material

Severe plastic deformation and lateral flow during machining of pure iron surface resulted in relatively serious tool wear and poor surface quality. Although several methods proposed could improve machinability of pure iron to some extent, poor wettability and high plasticity of pure iron cannot be changed, and further improvement of surface quality may be therefore restrained. In this paper, we propose a new machining method using atmospheric pressure plasma jet to adjust material properties of pure iron during precision turning process. The influence mechanism of plasma jet on surface wettability of pure iron is investigated by plasma modification experiment, scanning electron microscope, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. On the basis of the influence mechanism, precision turning experiments are performed under different lubricating conditions. The experimental results indicate that plasma jet can effectively improve pure iron surface wettability by changing surface composition while not influencing surface microstructures. Under plasma atmosphere, surface roughness and cutting force are obviously reduced, and tool wear is effectively alleviated.