Research on High-Speed Drilling Performances of Austenitic Stainless Steels

Due to specific properties arising from their structure (high ductility, high toughness,strong tenacious and low heat conductivity), the stainless steels have poor machinability. The drilling of the stainless steels becomes the machining difficulty for their serious work-hardening and abrasion of tools. In this paper, the austenitic stainless steel is used as the work-piece to perform the contrastive experiments with the TiN coated and TiAlN-coated high-speed steel drills. The cutting force, torque, cutting temperature, and the abrasion of drills and tool life are tested and analyzed in the process of high-speed drilling. Experiment results show the effect of drilling speed on cutting force, cutting temperature, and drill wear. TiAlN-coated drills demonstrate better performances in high speed drilling. The research results will be of great benefit in the selection of drills and in the control of tool wear in high speed drilling of stainless steels.