Wear of the cutting edge in the bandsawing operation when cutting austenitic 17-7 stainless steel

This paper reports on experimental data associated with forces, power and specific cutting energy associated with wear of high-speed steel bimetal bandsaw blades cutting 17-7 austenitic stainless steel bars. Several different methods of assessing the wear modes and mechanisms have been previously reported [1], further work has been undertaken in the above area to relate wear with quantified parameters of forces and specific cutting energy.For bandsawing of austenitic stainless steel, the major wear mode is associated with the rounding of the cutting edge and forming of a worn flank [1] and [2]. The change in cutting edge geometry leads to an increase in cutting forces and hence changes to the specific cutting energy. Furthermore, the cutting edge radius increases as the wear progresses causing metal removal to take place by a combination of ploughing and discontinuous chip formation. The wear modes are reflected in the cutting force ratio which approaches ∼1 for full ploughing and an increasing specific cutting energy.