Wear Behavior of Thin CVD Diamond Films During the Interrupted Cut

CVD diamond films are often used as wear protection for cutting tools. During the machining of non-ferrous metal alloys nano- and microcrystalline CVD diamond films reduce abrasive wear due to their inherent hardness. In many applications this coating technology has the potential to replace conventional polycrystalline diamond (PCD) with binder as cutting material. As opposed to PCD, CVD diamond not only offers outstanding properties but also has a high geometrical flexibility regarding the tools to be coated when deposited as a thin film. However, in the past adhesion problems of CVD diamond films have limited their application range. This becomes especially evident during machining in the interrupted cut. Recent developments in the tool coating industry such as customized pre-treatment methods of the substrate have led to CVD diamond films with improved film adhesion. Hence this paper discusses the wear behavior of newly developed CVD diamond films during face milling of the aluminum cast alloy G-AlSi7Cu4Mg. In addition to the cutting experiments to separately investigate the adhesive and abrasive wear behavior of the films model tests were performed.