Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2002) 19:157162

2002 Springer-Verlag London Limited

On the Dry Machining of Steel Surfaces Using Superhard Tools
A. G. Mamalis
1
, J. Kundrak
2
and K. Gyani
2
1
Manufacturing Technology Division, Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece; and
2
Department of Production Engineering, University of Miskolc, Hungary
Coolant for cutting and grinding not only increases the pro-
duction costs, but also damages the environment and health of
the employees. Therefore, attention should be directed towards
machining processes, where the use of coolant can be reduced
signicantly or even stopped. Analysis of the cutting processes
and the tool materials throws light on the area where wet,
moist, or dry machining are applicable.
Dry machining with CBN tools, so called hard turning,
performed on hardened steels has produced very favourable
results, which are applicable in industry. The characteristics
of the surface integrity with dry machining are more favourable
than with grinding and the operation costs are reduced. In
hard turning, the compressive residual stress eld developed,
in contrast to the tensile stresses developed in grinding,
increases the fatigue life of the machined components.
Keywords: Dry machining; Fatigue life; Hard turning; Pre-
cision grinding; Residual stress elds; Surface integrity
1. Introduction
Application of coolants in cutting is widespread. Their cooling
and lubricating effect ensures the economical tool life of certain
tool materials, e.g. tool steels (TS) and high-speed steels (HSS),
since their washing effect results in the cleanliness of the
machined workpieces, and higher production and good surface
quality are obtained. However, besides these favourable charac-
teristics, the cutting coolant both evaporates and is washed
away; this lost coolant has a very harmful effect on the
environment. In addition, the purchase, handling, and proper
disposal of the coolant constitutes a signicant cost. These two
factors, i.e. the environmental pollution and the cost, have
become important and, thus, work is directed towards dry
machining. In this eld, new tool materials provide many
advantages because cutting is performed under dry conditions,
Correspondence and offprint requests to: Professor A. G. Mamalis,
Manufacturing Technology Division, Department of Mechanical Engin-
eering, National University of Athens, 42, 28th October Avenue, 106
82 Athens, Greece. E-mail: mamaliscentral.ntua.gr
and their productivity is also high. Grinding hardened steels,
which requires a large amount of coolant, can be replaced by
dry machining.
Environmental protection has attracted much attention in
manufacturing. In metal removal processes, environmentally
friendly methods of applying coolant can be classied as fol-
lows:
1. Modifying the composition of the coolant by:
Application of composition without oil.
Using synthetic materials.
Preference for natural materials.
Application of biologically breaking down materials.
Application of materials with signicantly longer tool life.
2. Reducing the amount of coolant by:
Programmed feeding of coolant.
Optimised dosing.
Supervised conduction.
3. Minimising the amount of liquid (minimal cooling) by:
Using less then 50 ml h
1
of liquids.
Inner conduction through the tool.
Externally controlled conduction with special dosing equip-
ment.
Application of liquid mixed with air.
4. Application of coolant not in liquid state by:
Cooling with compressed air or with cold gas.
Cooling with solid coolant.
Using impregnated tools.
5. Dry machining
This modied environmentally friendly cooling process is appli-
cable in the case of superhard tools and of ceramic tools.
These tool materials do not require any cooling because they
possess outstanding wear resistance and heat strength. For
diamonds, heating is avoided because of their excellent heat
conductivity. However, with the traditional, but still widely
used, tool materials (HSS, TS), the possibility of environmen-
tally friendly cooling has to be examined in each case.
Grinding requires a larger amount of coolant than all the
other kinds of metal removal processing because of the very
158 A. G. Mamalis et al.
high contact temperature (1000C) and the necessity for wash-
ing. Two possibilities emerge:
Replacing grinding with hard turning.
Application of new or dry grinding.
The cooling conditions in metal removal processing, depending
on the machine tools used, are given in Fig. 1.
In the present paper, these new tendencies in metal removal
processing, with minimal cooling and dry machining, are inves-
tigated. The surface integrity of hardened steel surfaces sub-
jected to hard turning and grinding and the residual stress
elds developed are reported and discussed.
2. The Effect of Minimal Cooling and Dry
Machining on the Cutting Parameters
Minimal cooling, and dry machining combined with the
requirements of environmental protection, as outlined above,
have turned work on cutting in a new direction. At the moment,
the initial results are very promising and further breakthrough
results are expected, in spite of the fact that changing the
cooling method requires changing all the cutting parameters
(ank wear, tool life, cutting strength, specic energy, contact
temperature, etc.) which leads to a change of the surface
integrity (surface roughness, residual stresses, material micro-
structure of the surface layer, etc.). The user is interested
mainly in the tool life and the reliability of the tool, expressed
by the fatigue limit, which is mainly related to the residual
stress elds developed.
Surface integrity of machined surfaces has been extensively
investigated in the past. In particular, a high correlation
between the developed subsurface residual stresses and the
fatigue limit was shown [1,2]. It was observed, during testing,
that surface roughness is not the critical factor that it has
traditionally been assumed to be. It appears that the effects of
roughness are overshadowed by the effects of residual stresses
and the other factors of surface integrity. These experiments
indicate that there are alloys where surface roughness has very
little or no effect on the fatigue strength.
When analysing the effect of surface roughness, the effect
of tool marks, sharp corners, scratches and other geometrical
considerations has to be taken into account, since these factors
constitute sources of stress concentrations and reasons for
Fig. 1. Cooling depending on the tool materials.
premature failure due to fatigue. The relationship between
residual stresses, roughness, and fatigue limit is shown in
Fig. 2; it depends on the tool and workpiece materials, on the
process combinations, on machining data, and on many other
factors [3,4].
3. Experimental
Turning with CBN tools, often called hard turning, is more
and more frequently applied for the nishing of hardened or
superhard steels and cast iron. This cutting process can replace
abrasive machining which has been applied previously, if it is
more economical and also meets the quality and accuracy
requirements of the parts.
Applications of hard turning have been widely used in the
automotive industry in recent years and, in particular, for
precision machining. The main advantages of hard turning are
the cost reduction of these operations and the increase of the
fatigue limit of hard turned surfaces. Hard turning results in
compressive residual stresses in the surface layer, which
increases the fatigue life. For rolling contact surfaces, it is
very important to generate compressive residual stresses, to
increase their fatigue strength limit [5].
Our hard turning experiments were performed under the
following conditions:
Workpiece material: hardened ball-bearing steel (100Cr6;HRC
60 2) cylinders with a diameter d = 45100 mm.
Cutting tools: superhard tools based on boron nitride for cutting
hardened steels. In this case, the chip removal is characteristi-
cally inuenced by the physical-mechanical features of the
polycrystals (high hardness, high temperature conductivity, high
resistance to wear and temperature) and their polycrystalline
character. The superhard tools used for the experiments were
Composite 01 (C01) and Composite 10 (C10) tool materials
with tool geometry
o
= 5;
o
=
o
= 15;
s
= 0;
r
= 45;

r
= 2;
r
= 15; b

= 0.3 mm.
Machine tool: E4001000 universal lathe
Cutting parameters: cutting speed, v
c
= 10400 m min
1
; depth
of cut, a
p
= 0.050.4 mm; feedrate, f = 0.0250.4 mm rev
1
.
Fig. 2. Relationship between surface roughness, residual stresses and
fatigue limit at room temperature in cutting Inconel alloy [3].
Dry Machining of Steel Surfaces 159
Our grinding experiments were performed under the follow-
ing conditions:
Workpiece material: hardened ball bearing steel (100Cr6; HRC
60 2) rings, with outer diameter, d
w
= 120 mm, inner diameter,
d = 108 mm, and width, b = 20 mm. After grinding, a 100 mm
arclength was cut off with Erosimat for residual stress measure-
ments.
The xturing of the workpieces was on the inner diameter
using a exibly expanding precision xing device.
Grinding wheels: wheel for traverse external grinding
400 40 127 89A60K9V (Tyrolit); pre-strained wheel for
internal grinding 400 20 300 EK6046LVX (special),
grinding with its inner diameter, d
w
= 300 mm.
Coolant: Syntilo-4 (synthetic, Castrol); the quantity used was
30 l min
1
.
Machine tools: KE-25004 Cylindrical Grinding Machine and
SI-4 Internal Grinding Machine.
A pre-strained wheel is mounted in place of the spindle of the
internal grinding machine (Fig. 3). Note that, pre-straining of
the wheel which was put in a frame was necessary, in order
to avoid bursting because of the high r.p.m.
Grinding parameters: wheel speed, v
s
= 3060 m s
1
; workpiece
speed, v
w
= 1530 m min
1
; depth of cut, a
e
= 0.01
0.05 mm/two stroke; feedrate, v
fL
= 10 m/work rev, feedrate
(for the pre-strained wheel), v
fR
= 16 m s
1
, spark out time,
05 s.
Dressing: single-point diamond 1.5 carat; depth of cut of
diamond, a
pD
= 0.02 mm, three times; feed of diamond,
f
D
= 0.1 mm/wheel rev, with coolant.
Measurements of the residual stresses were made after grinding
with a medium worn wheel, a material volume, v
w
= 300 mm
3
.
Residual stresses, developed during the hard turning and the
precision grinding were measured on ring-shape samples, using
the method of continuous stress release made by acid solution.
Tangential residual tensions depending on the distance from
the surface [6] were measured and the deformation was evalu-
ated by means of an appropriate computer program.
Fig. 3. High-speed grinding machine equiped with special pre-strained
wheel.
4. Results and Discussion
Using the elaborated hard turning process and replacing the
grinding process with hard turning, many turning operations
and operations performed previously with grinding can be
performed in dry conditions. During our work, we investigated
the attainable accuracy, the achievable surface roughness, the
change of the microstructure in the surface layer and the
development of the residual stresses. In this paper, only the
results of the investigation of the residual stresses are reported
because this has the most signicant effect on fatigue life of
the parts.
4.1 Surface Integrity
4.1.1 Hard Turning
The distribution of residual stresses, R
R
, with depth below the
surface, h, for the workpiece turned with a superhard tool for
various cutting conditions are presented in Figs 4 and 5. The
main characteristics of the distribution of residual stresses are
their maximum value and their distance from the surface.
Examination of the surface and subsurface layers reveals an
increase in microhardness and the existence of compressive
residual stresses. Note that, the distribution of microhardness
and its magnitude are in accordance with the distribution of
residual stresses. In hard turning, performed under the same
conditions, the maximum microhardness corresponds with the
maximum compressive residual stress.
The increase of the cutting speed results in a slight decrease
of the maximum of the compressive residual stress prole, see
Fig. 4(a), whilst the feed has no effect on it, see Fig. 4(b). A
slight increase of the maximum residual stress is indicated
with increasing depth of cut, see Fig. 4(c). Correspondingly,
the depth of the layer, where the maximum compressive
residual stress occurs, increases with increasing feed and depth
of cut, while it decreases in the case of increasing cutting
speed, see Figs 4(a) to 4(c).
The ank tool wear inuences the depth of the compressive
residual stresses, see Figs 5(a) to 5(c). Cutting speed, depth of
cut and feedrate, adjusted in cutting, have hardly any effect
on the characteristics of the residual stresses in the surface
layer and in the tangential direction (compare Figs 5(a), 5(b)
and 5(c)).
4.1.2 Precision Grinding
Residual stress distribution below the ground surface is shown
in Figs 6 and 7. The speed of the wheel is the grinding
parameter with the most inuence on the residual stresses for
the steel examined. The contact temperature, which increases
with increasing wheel speed, results in microstructural changes
and, subsequently, in volumetric changes of the structural
elements. Measurements show that the depth of cut does
not increase, or increases much less than the residual tensile
stresses [7].
During the grinding process the tensile residual stresses
developed are a direct consequence of the high temperature,
which is developed in the wheelworkpiece contact zone [5].
160 A. G. Mamalis et al.
Fig. 4. Distribution of residual stresses with depth below surface in
hard turning of hardened ball bearing steel (100Cr6). (a) Effect of
cutting speed, v
c
for constant depth of cut (a
p
= 0.2 mm) and feedrate
(f = 0.1 mm rev
1
). 1, v
c
= 56 m min
1
; 2, v
c
= 81 m min
1
; 3,
v
c
= 160 m min
1
. (b) Effect of feedrate, f for constant cutting speed
(v
c
= 56 m min
1
) and depth of cut (a
p
= 0.2 mm). 1, f = 0.1 mm rev
1
;
2, f = 0.15 mm rev. (c) Effect of depth of cut, a
p
for constant cutting
speed (v
c
= 56 m min
1
) and feedrate (f = 0.1 mm rev
1
.) 1, a
p
= 0.1 mm;
2, a
p
= 0.2 mm; 3, a
p
= 0.3 mm.
It is important to reduce the high tensile residual stresses, for
example by the increasing peripheral workpiece speed and
decreasing the depth of cut, see Fig. 6(a). Note, also, that
another way to reduce the high tensile residual stresses is the
employment of the spark-out process and the reduction of the
wheel speed. From Fig. 6(b) it can be seen that, by reducing
the wheel speed from 60 m s
1
to 30 m s
1
and with 5 s spark-
out time the tensile residual stresses decrease by 50%.
To reduce the tensile residual stresses and increase the
productivity, high-speed grinding was employed using the
grinding equipment shown in Fig. 3 [8]. The experimental
results and the grinding conditions are shown in Fig. 7. The
Fig. 5. Distribution of residual stresses with depth below surface in
hard turning of hardened ball bearing steel (100Cr6). Effect of ank
wear, VB for constant depth of cut (a
p
= 0.2 mm) and feedrate
(f = 0.1 mm rev
1
) and for varying cutting speed (1, v
c
= 56 m min
1
;
2, v
c
= 81 m min
1
; 3, v
c
= 112 m min
1
; 4, v
c
= 160 m min
1
). (a)
VB = 0 mm (sharp tool). (b) VB = 0.2 mm. (c) VB = 0.4 mm (worn
tool).
employment of this new grinding method with a suitable spark-
out time resulted in a signicant reduction of the residual
tensile stresses, but their distribution remained unchanged.
When comparing the parameters of surfaces, which were
precision ground or machined with cutting tools made of
different tool materials, the advantage of hard cutting with
CBN tool was seen to be considerable. In the latter case,
advantageous compressive residual stresses and hardened layers
were formed over a wide range of technological parameters.
4.2 Effect of Residual Stress Fields on Fatigue Life
From these results, the residual stresses developed in precision
turning and grinding are signicantly different (compare Figs 4
Dry Machining of Steel Surfaces 161
Fig. 6. Distribution of residual stresses with depth below surface in
external precission grinding of hardened ball bearing steel (100Cr6)
cylinder of diameter, d
w
= 120 mm (grinding wheel A9960K-9V; cool-
ant: Syntilo 4). (a) Effect of workpiece speed, v
w
and depth of
cut, a
e
for constant wheel speed v
s
= 32 m s
1
. 1, v
w
= 15 m min
1
,
a
e
= 0.05 mm/two stroke; 2, v
w
= 60 m min
1
, a
e
= 0.01 mm/two stroke.
(b) Effect of workpiece speed, v
s
for constant workpiece speed,
v
w
= 30 m min
1
, depth of cut, a
e
= 0.01 mm/two stroke, spark-out 5 s
and v
fL
= 10 m/workpiece rev. 1, v
s
= 60 m s
1
; 2, v
s
= 30 m s
1
.
Fig. 7. Distribution of residual stresses with depth below surface in
external high-speed grinding of hardened ball bearing steel (100Cr6)
cylinder of diameter, d
w
= 120 mm with strained wheel EK60-LX-VX
and coolant Syntilo 4. Effect of spark out for constant grinding
conditions v
s
= 60 m s
1
, v
w
= 30 m min
1
, v
fR
= 16 m s
1
. 1, spark-out:
0 s; 2, spark-out: 5 s.
and 5 with Figs 6 and 7). In hard turning compressive residual
stresses are developed, whereas in grinding tensile stresses are
developed. The difference between the residual stresses in hard
turned and ground surfaces has an effect on the fatigue life of
the workpieces.
Fatigue tests under similar conditions on hard turned and
ground ball-bearing rings were carried out by the Timken ball
bearing company [2]. Before the fatigue test, the specimens
were supernished, so that the surface roughness, R
a
was the
same, and less than 0.1 m. The results of the fatigue test for
the hard turned and precision ground components are shown
in Figs 8(a) and 8(b), respectively. Examination showed that
the hard turned bearings have longer fatigue life than the
ground and supernished bearings.
5. Conclusions
Summarising the main features of the results reported, for
metal removal processing in dry conditions, the following
conclusions may be drawn:
1. The experimental results prove that, in the case of hardened
steels, cutting with CBN tools performed in dry conditions
is a suitable substitute for precision grinding and, therefore,
the number of materials which can be hard turned with
tools with denite edges can be increased.
2. In many situations, residual stresses play an important role
in the quality of the surface integrity and durability. The
aim of the advanced machining processes is to assure
predictable, optimal residual stress distribution in the sur-
face layer.
3. In dry hard turning performed on hardened steels, the
presence of compressive residual stresses in the surface
layer results in an increased fatigue life of the hard turned
components, which is higher than that for the ground steels.
4. In precision grinding, owing to the high contact temperature
and the small depth of cut, the surface integrity changes,
and residual tensile stresses develop. Therefore, as men-
tioned above, the fatigue life of the ground workpieces is
lower than that for the hard turned workpieces.
5. In hard turning, the surface roughness, the magnitude of
the allowance and the material removal rate are the same
as in grinding. Thus, in many cases, if a suitable machine
tool is available, dry hard turning is cheaper than grinding
Fig. 8. Effect of nishing process on the fatigue life for (a) small
bearing [2], (b) large bearing [2].
162 A. G. Mamalis et al.
and can replace grinding, which requires a large amount
of coolant.
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of machined structural components, US Air Force Laboratory
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4. Metcut: Machining Data Handbook, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1980.
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Notation
a
e
depth of cut in grinding
a
p
depth of cut in turning
a
pD
depth of cut of the dressing diamond
b

width of edge breaking off

d
w
diameter of the workpiece
f feed
f
D
feed of the dressing diamond
h depth below surface
s time
v
c
cutting speed
v
fL
axial feed per minute
v
fR
radial feed per minute
v
s
circumferential speed of wheel
v
w
circumferential speed of workpiece
v
B
ank wear

0
tool orthogonal clearance

0
tool minor edge angle

0
tool orthogonal rake

r
tool cutting edge angle

s
tool cutting edge inclination