GOALI: Mitigating Chemical Wear in Diamond Cutting Tools Using Novel Cutting Fluid Additives

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Diamond tools are ill-suited for machining ferrous alloys (e.g. steel) because of the iron-induced chemical wear of diamond. The wear mitigation techniques identified to-date have received limited industrial acceptance because they involve either extensive modifications to the machining process or compositional modifications to the ferrous alloys. This award supports fundamental research that enables the development of novel cutting fluid additives to mitigate chemical wear in diamond tools when machining ferrous alloys. The successful mitigation of this tool wear will extend the benefits of using diamond tools (namely, realizing aggressive machining conditions and generating mirror-finish surfaces) to ferrous alloys. These alloys are used widely by the multi-billion dollar manufacturing industry spanning key application sectors such as aerospace, defense, automotive, and biomedicine. Research results will also benefit the cutting fluids industry. The research objective is to understand the influence of 2D materials on the diamond tool wear mitigation efficacy when machining ferrous alloys using colloidal suspensions of the 2D materials. The candidate 2D materials include graphene, graphene oxide, hexagonal boron nitride, molybdenum disulfide, and tungsten disulfide. Upon synthesis, the geometry of the 2D materials will be characterized using scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy, whereas their chemistry will be characterized using the X-ray diffraction technique. Single point diamond turning experiments will be conducted on cylindrical ferrous workpieces. The ferrous materials of interest include iron (99.99 % purity) and steel with varying carbon concentrations, since carbon content in the alloy is known to influence the chemical wear of diamond tools. The wear mitigation efficacy of the colloidal suspensions will be quantified by measuring the volumetric tool wear (using optical profilometry), cutting temperature/forces (using in-situ sensing), carbon diffusion into the workpiece (using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy), and surface roughness (using optical profilometry).