A novel tool wear suppression method for polycrystalline diamond by applying magnetic field in turning of ferrous materials

Ferrous materials are widely used in the mould industry because of their excellent properties. However, ferrous materials are regarded as difficult-to-cut materials for diamond turning due to their affinity for diamond. The resulting catastrophic tool wear leads to high machining costs in ultraprecision turning. The unpaired d-electrons in the workpiece are regarded as the dominant element causing catastrophic diamond wear during the turning. However, an insightful method for unpaired d-electrons in existing assisted machining schemes is still lacking. As a type of diamond tool, polycrystalline diamond (PCD) tools are inexpensive to appropriately carry out wear experiments. Therefore, in this study, a novel assisted method based on a magnetic field (MF) was applied to suppress the PCD tool wear. Experimental results demonstrated that the MF-assisted machining can reduce the flank wear of PCD tools by 30.6%. The spin polarisation of d-electrons by the MF was the dominant mechanism inhibiting the chemical reaction and graphitisation, and thus suppressing the PCD tool wear. Simultaneously, the suppression of machining system vibration by the Lorentz force also had a positive effect on the suppression of the PCD tool wear. The innovative method provides an assisted machining scheme to inhibit the catastrophic wear of PCD tools.