Cutting polycrystalline boron nitride

A wide range of cutting-tool materials is available. Properties, performance capabilities, and cost vary widely (2,7). Various steels (see Steel) cast cobalt alloys (see Cobalt and cobalt alloys) cemented, cast, and coated carbides (qv) ceramics (qv), sintered polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (cBN) (see Boron compounds) and sintered polycrystalline diamond tbin diamond coatings on cemented carbides and ceramics and single-crystal natural diamond (see Carbon) are all used as tool materials. Most tool materials used in the 1990s were developed during the twentieth century. The tool materials of the 1990s... 

Cubic Phase of Boron Nitride c-BN. The cubic phase of boron nitride (c-BN) is one of the hardest materials, second only to diamond and with similar crystal structure. It is the first example of a new material theoretically predicted and then synthesized in laboratory. From automated synthesis a microcrystalline phase of cubic boron nitride is recovered at ambient conditions in a metastable state, providing the basic material for a wide range of cutting and grinding applications. Synthetic polycrystalline diamonds and nitrides are principally used as abrasives but in spite of the greater hardness of diamond, its employment as a superabrasive is limited by a relatively low chemical and thermal stability. Cubic boron nitride, on the contrary, has only half the hardness of diamond but an extremely high thermal stability and inertness. 

P-BN tools work satisfactorily in hardened steel up to contact temperatures of 1000°C, since there is no chemical reaction between boron nitride and iron. This, however, also depends on the binding phase of the polycrystalline materials and can lead to adhesive wear [24, 25]. In hard steel, the main wear mechanism on the tool is abrasion by hard alloy carbide particles [26]. In the case of Co-based super alloy (Vitallium), the results on hard-BN tool wear are somewhat incongruous [27, 28], while Inconel 718 can be machined under proper selection of the cutting conditions [29]. Apparently, austenitic steels containing a high percentage of Co are difficult to cut by hard-BN tools, due to the formation of cobalt nitrides which leads to high tool wear [8]. 

Polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (CBN) is a material with excellent hot hardness and can be used at very high cutting speeds. It also has good toughness and resistance to thermal shock. CBN consists of boron nitride with ceramic or titanium nitride binder and is brazed onto a cemented carbide carrier to form an insert. CBN grades are largely used for finish turning hardened steel... 

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