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Content archived on 2024-05-07

INDUSTRIALIZATION OF NOVEL NANOCOMPOSITE CERAMIC TOOLS FOR SEVERE CUTTING APPLICATIONS

Objective

Metalworking operations in the automotive, aerospace, steelworking and machinery industries are taking advantage of ceramic cutting tools particularly for machining hard alloys materials, where traditional carbide tools prove uneconomic due to their short working life.
Traditional tungsten carbide tools although maintaining about 95% of the European market (1000 M Ecu) appear to have reached the limits of their potential.
Tools based on ceramic materials, representing about 5% of the market, are used to perform operations that cannot be done with traditional carbide tools, but they tend to be brittle and in some cases prone to failure. Improvements in toughness and increased reliability are needed in order to offer to the market a real alternative. Currently the toughest of these materials incorporate hazardous SiC whiskers and requires expensive manufacturing processes. Further potential for improving the performance and reliability of the ceramic cutting tools has also been claimed in technical and patent literature by Japanese researchers by introducing nanoscale particles of SiC into an Alumina matrix. Reproducing these results outside Japan has proved difficult.
Recently a BRITE-EURAM project investigated the feasibility of using ultrafine powders for making ceramic cutting tools by sintering, incorporating nanoscale particle reinforcement of TiC and SiC. These innovative ceramic products have demonstrated a real improvement in cutting performance and acceptable production costs.
The NANOCUT project aims to consolidate the positive results from the previous project, taking the products closer to industrial scale. The main objectives are :
- Optimisation of the proposed composition of the powder grades.
- Definition of the production process for economic manufacture.
- Evaluation of the cutting performance under severe conditions in the automotive, aerospace, steelworking and machinery industries.
- Investigate machining conditions to achieve longer tool-life, higher metal removal rate, and dry cutting conditions.
- Investigate industrialisation of nanocomposite ceramic products, for a wider spectrum of applications included in the engineering and electronic ceramic market.
- Full evaluation of the cost/benefit of producing these nanocomposite products.
Positive results from the proposed workplan should facilitate the industrialisation of a new innovative family of nanocomposite products for a European market penetration level up to 10% of the total market.

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Coordinator

METALLOCERAMICA VANZETTI SPA
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Via Orobia 4
20139 MILANO
Italy

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