Cutting Tools - definition and types of hard metal and difficult material,tool,End Mills,carbide,carbide cutters,manufacturer

Definition and types of hard metal and difficult material

1. Hard Material:
   Generally it means higher hardness of the steel material which can be cut, such as alloy steel, die steel. . . etc.
   Applicable to the cutters with coating, such as: TiAlN, TiN.
2. Difficult material:
   It means the difficult-to-cut work piece, such as nickel-based alloys, stainless steel, etc.
   Stainless steel is applicable to the cutting tools with coating like TiALN.
   CBN tools is suitable to cut nickel-based alloy.
3. Soft material:
   It means easy-to-cut cutting materials, such as aluminum, aluminum-magnesium alloy, low carbon steel, etc.
   Aluminum material is applicable to cutting tools of uncoated, containing cobalt, and high helix angle.

Aluminum material is also applicable to carbide cutter.

A variety of different work materials are cut bycutting tools of different materials. However, there are lots of cutting parameters, not only material, nature, shape, and feed, etc, but also manufacturers have lots of experience and information. For those materials which are less usage or used in specific areas, the related information is less, due to less market demand and few makers’ reference data, the failure rate will be higher, so users think this material is difficult to process.

For example, aerospace materials of nickel-based super alloy INCO718 738 is well-known as very difficult work material, the general comment is” the tool is very loss."