Today's applications and future developments of coatings for drills and rotating cutting tools

According to the sold value, 40% of all cutting tools are coated in industry today. This paper summarizes the most important application field of conventional and new coatings for cutting tools. There are two opposing development trends in the cutting industry today: (1) in dry machining the user wants to work without coolant to save the environment and production costs; (2) in high speed machining (HSC) the cutting parameters can be increased by a factor of 4-10. Aside from increasing productivity, multi-spindle heads can be replaced by one spindle, increasing the flexibility enormously. With both technologies much greater heat is produced than under normal cutting conditions. The cutting materials must have a high warm hardness and cannot work without a good heat isolation coating between the hot chips and the tool body. This paper gives an overview of the latest industrial applications of different coatings for dry and HSC cutting and characterizes the most important requirements of future coatings for cutting tools.