Market Analysis of Cutting Tool Materials and CBN Cutting Tools

With the rapid development of modern technology and manufacturing, more and more manufacturing enterprises often use surfacing welding, spray welding, laser cladding and thermal spraying technology to make hard-face materials melt on the surface of the workpiece in order to improve product quality and service life, so they finally gain higher hardness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, impact toughness and other properties.

As the repair process technology becomes mature gradually, the repair process becomes more convenient and quicker, and also does not affect the overall production schedule. The hardness of the workpiece after repair is almost above HRC45, belonging to hard-face workpieces that are difficult to machine. and some workpiece surfaces after welding are generally rugged, which will have stricter requirements for the cutting tool performance.

At present, the cutting tool materials on the market include cemented carbide cutting tool, ceramic cutting tool and cubic boron nitride (CBN)cutting tool, and manufacturers must understand their performances of the above three kinds of cutting tools. The cemented carbide cutting tool is the main cutting tool, but it is only suitable for processing the workpiece materials under HRC40; Although ceramic cutting tool can be used for processing black metal material artifacts between HRC45-55, it is only suitable for finishing process and small artifacts because of its large brittleness. Therefore, cubic boron nitride cutting tool becomes more important as it can be used for processing hard-face workpieces.

Cubic boron nitride cutting tool was used for machining in 1970, but due to the expensive cost, it didn't get a good promotion at that time. But in recent ten years, it is widely used in many areas. With the increasing requirement for the products quality, the prices of raw materials continue to rise, and the advantages of the cheap labor gradually lose. More and more manufacturers not only think a lot of the quality and at the same time, the efficiency and cost also become their concerns. Therefore, cubic boron nitride cutting tool are gradually popular and become accepted by people, widely used in the field of hard-face processing.