PCD tool performance in high-speed milling of high volume fraction SiCp/Al composites

This paper presents a systematical study on polycrystalline diamond (PCD) tool performance during high-speed milling of high volume fraction (65 %) and small size (nominal size 10 μm) SiC particle-reinforced aluminum, which is rarely reported before. The influence of milling parameters (milling speed and feed rate) and PCD particle size on tool wear were investigated. The results indicated that the tool wear increased dramatically with the milling speed, and it was not suitable to mill the material above 300 m/min for the industrial application. Larger feed rate could achieve larger removed volume before VC reached 0.6 mm, while the pattern reverses in terms of milling time. The optimized PCD particle size is 10 μm. The main wear modes of PCD tool were flank wear and crater wear, and the wear mechanism was analyzed by scanned electronical microscope (SEM), laser scanning microscope (LSM), and Raman spectroscopy.