The difference between high-speed steel milling cutter and carbide milling cutter

The difference between high-speed steel milling cutter and carbide milling cutter
The raw materials used in the two milling cutters are different, and the production processes are different.
The raw material used for tungsten steel milling cutter is carbide, commonly known as tungsten steel.
The raw material used for high-speed steel milling cutter is high-speed steel.

Carbide milling cutter is generally made of carbide round bar material, generally using CNC tool grinder as processing equipment, diamond grinding wheel as processing tool, through computer or G code editing processing route one-time molding and manufacturing, this processing method has the advantages of high efficiency, high precision, and good consistency of mass production. The disadvantage is that most equipment is imported products, and the general price is more than 1 million yuan.

There is also processing with ordinary equipment, which is divided into groove grinding machine processing spiral groove, end gear machine processing end gear and end, edge cleaning machine (peripheral gear machine) processing peripheral gear. This product needs to be processed separately according to various sections, and the labor cost consumed is very high. Moreover, the quality of mass-produced products depends on the workers' own proficiency in operating the machine to control, so the accuracy and consistency will be worse. In addition, the quality of cemented carbide milling cutters also depends on the grade of cemented carbide materials used. Generally, the alloy grade should be selected according to the material being processed. In general, the smaller the grain size of the alloy, the better.

The difference between high-speed steel milling cutters and cemented carbide is that high-speed steel needs to undergo heat treatment to improve its own hardness. Ordinary steel, no matter what kind of steel it is, is soft as long as it has not been heat treated.

Currently, the internationally popular high-speed steels such as M42 and M7 are popular in the United States. Among them, M42 high-speed steel has the best comprehensive performance, whether it is grindability, hardness and red hardness. However, M42 high-speed steel contains 8 cobalts, which is a scarce and non-renewable resource. Therefore, the price of M42 is very expensive, generally between 300,000 and 200,000. Of course, the price of domestically produced M42 made of recycled materials will be cheaper. In addition, the popular domestic ones are W18, M2, W9, general high-speed steel and M2AL, W9AL and other high-performance high-speed steels. Among them, M2AL and W9AL are introduced in detail. As the name suggests, these two grades of high High-speed steel is made by adding aluminum to M2 and W9. The role of aluminum is equivalent to a binder, which tightly bonds the particles in the steel together, so that the quality of the steel will be good. In particular, M2AL is a high-speed steel specially developed by my country to replace M42. Cutting tools made of this high-speed steel were very popular in the foreign market in the 1980s. However, with market competition and excessive use of recycled materials to manufacture high-speed steel, the performance of this steel is still worse than M42. However, for some processed materials that are not particularly demanding, M2AL is still a good choice, after all, it is much cheaper than M42.

Milling cutter coating

The coating on the surface of the milling cutter is generally about 3 μ thick. The main purpose is to increase the surface hardness of the milling cutter. Some coatings can also reduce the affinity with the processed material.

In general, the toughness and hardness of the milling cutter cannot be achieved at the same time, and the emergence of coating technology has solved this situation to a certain extent. For example, the milling cutter base is made of raw materials with higher toughness, and a coating with high hardness is applied on the surface, so that the performance of the milling cutter is greatly improved.