Machinability of hardened AISI S1 cold work tool steel using cubic boron nitride

Recently, hard turning became an interesting method to the manufacturers as an alternative to the grinding process due to its superior features such as good surface quality, good productivity, lower production costs, lower power consumption, and shorter processing time. Despite its considerable benefits, hard turning is a difficult process that needs advanced cutting inserts such as ceramics and cubic boron nitride. However, these cutting inserts are costly and should be used properly by choosing appropriate machining parameters. In the presented work, the hard turning process was performed to investigate the machinability of AISI S1 cold work tool steel using cubic boron nitride insert. The relation between machining parameters namely, depth of cut, cutting speed, and feed rate on the responses such as power consumption, surface roughness, and machining sound was found using a full factorial orthogonal array of response surface methodology. In addition, analysis of variance was used to identify the most important machining parameters that influence output parameters. Based on the results, surface roughness was dominantly affected by feed rate, whereas, sound and power consumption were influenced by all machining parameters especially cutting speed and feed rate. A good agreement between the experimental and the predicted values were observed.