Ceramic Inserts For Hard Turning

Kyocera s ceramic inserts are designed to resist oxidation and maintain hardness at elevated temperatures.

Ceramic inserts for hard turning.

Applying ceramic cutters is different but it s not alien. Features of ceramic inserts. For steels softer than approximately 55 hrc use ceramics or cemented carbide inserts. Cubic boron nitride cbn grades are the ultimate cutting tool material for hard part turning of case and induction hardened steels.

Superior heat resistance enables high speed machining aluminium oxide ceramic. Since hard parts are usually at the end of the part creation cycle there is a high amount of value in the part already. When hard turning with ceramic or cbn inserts crater wear will occur on optimized processes though if it occurs excessively there may be a need to reduce speeds or switch to an insert with a lower cbn content and better wear resistance. But don t let the high cost of inserts scare you off from the hard turning process as the high tooling costs are quickly offset by reductions in processing time and change over time.

With a properly tuned hard turning process these inserts are second only to grinding in terms of holding diameter tolerances. For many jobs in the 45 to 65 rc hardness range in which grinding was historically the process of choice hard turning and hard milling with ceramic insert cutters are finding increasing acceptance in shops. Ceramic inserts are recommended for turning of carbon and alloy steels 38 64 rc or rough finish turning of cast iron. However the cbn pcbn and ceramic inserts can be expensive especially when compared with the relatively low costs of grinding wheels.

The life of cbn inserts typically is more predictable than that of ceramic inserts. Hard part turning offers improved flexibility better lead times and higher quality. Ceramic is not as tough as cbn and it normally is not used when tolerances are tighter than 0 001 inch.