Influence of the microstructure of tool coatings based on Ti and Al on the blunting process during chipboard processing

Influence of the microstructure of tool coatings based on Ti and Al on the blunting process during chipboard processing.This work concerns three different tool coatings containing Ti and Al. i.e. TiN, AlTiN, TiAlSiN applied to cutting tools used in the machining of wood materials. In the case of the AlTiN coating, a multilayer structure with alternately arranged AlTiN and TiN nano-layers was used. The above coatings were applied to standard replaceable knives used for CNC milling heads made of WC-Co cemented carbide. The deposition process was carried out using the RF Magnetron Sputtering method. During the measurement on a workshop microscope, the VBmax index measured on the clearance face was adopted as the wear criterion. The research proved a very good behaviour of the TiN/^AlTiN multilayer coating, for which the longest average service life which was recorded exceeded the results obtained for the reference tool by about 30%. The addition of silicon, which was supposed to increase the abrasion resistance, only did not improve the durability of the blade, it actually worsened it by 6%. In addition, the coating, which has been widely used in the machine industry for a very long time, i.e. TiN, did not extend the tool life significantly (+ 7%).