Wear Behaviour and Cutting Performance of Surfaced Inserts for Wood Machining

achining, in general, and wood machining, in particular, is a complex to explain and describe many influencing factors. Natural wood is nonhomogeneous biological material, so each species of wood requires different machining conditions and tools. Understanding of wood properties, proper selection of cutting tools and machining parameters provides possibilities to improve quality of wooden products, to increase production efficiency, and to improve machining. The aim of this works was to find the most suitable cutting tools for machining of oak wood grown in Lithuania. This paper cover tests of two commercial cutting inserts made of high speed tool steel (CT01M-LA2 and 8X6FT) and two experimental inserts (EI) made by surfacing using submerged arc welding (SAW) technique and mixture of alloying elements spread on the surface under the industrial flux. Results of conducted milling tests demonstrated the suitability of suggested surfaced inserts for machining oak wood. All tool wear parameters have been evaluated and compared, such as cutting edge radius, edge recession, nose width, and cutting power. Cutting edge radius of EI after 3200 m of cutting length was ~ 4.00 μm, 3 – 4 times lower than wear of standard tool, while edge recession of surfaced inserts showed 2 – 3 times lower results. Received results confirmed that the cutting power increases on growing of feed per cutter. Surfaced inserts can replace commercial inserts used for wood machining.