CBN coatings on cutting tools

Hard cutting materials are a prerequisite for the machining of hard workpiece materials. Superhard cubic boron nittride (cBN) is the hardest known material eligible for the machining of ferrous materials. The developement of a cBN coating for cutting tools, combining the advantages of coating and of cBN, is of great importance for many branches of industry. Based on the first success of deposting adherent cBN films on cemented carbide substrates with a thickness of up to 0,8 pm at temperature for below 1000 °C, indexable inserts were coated with a B C film as target and a cBN facing. These coatings show excellent mechanical and physical properties. Cutting experiments with cBN coated cemented carbide tools were carried out and the tool life, cutting forces and workpiece surface roughness were measured. The results are presented for the machining of serval workpiece materials.