Boron-doped CVD diamond micro-end mills for machining titanium

In industry micro-milling tools made of cemented carbide are widely used. However, these micro-milling tools suffer from fast and random tool breakage during the machining of hard to machine materials. Therefore, in preliminary work micro-milling tools with cutting edges made of boron doped chemical vapour deposition (bdCVD) diamond were developed. In this work new micro-milling tools were successfully applied for machining titanium grade 2. Comprehensive cutting tests were carried out to analyse the influence of the spindle speed n, the feed per tooth ft, and the depth of cut ap on the surface roughness. Further experiments addressed the wear behaviour of the developed micro-milling tools. After a path length lc of 10 m a maximum width of flank wear land VBmax of 29 µm were observed.