Drilling of aluminium/PE sandwich material with a novel TiO2-coated HSS drill deposited by sol-gel process

摘要

Applications for composite materials are constantly increasing because of their lightweight combined with a high modulus of elasticity. Thus, the drilling of such materials is cause for concern for the scientific community since these components need generally to be fixed and assembled. Dimensional variations and the presence of burr are some of the problems that commonly arise due to the drill action in the composite material. Such problems should be minimized because it can compromise the quality of the final product. The present work studies the drilling of a sandwich composite material consisting of aluminium and polyethylene core (PEALL). The drilling tests were carried out using a TiO2-coated high-speed steel drills (HSS drills) deposited by sol-gel process. In order to optimize the hole quality, the influences of the TiO2 coating and the drilling parameters (speed and feed) are analysed. The thrust force, burr height and maximum diameter are collected to statistical study (analysis of variance (ANOVA)). The results underline that the TiO2-coated tool exhibits the best performance and improves the hole quality. Thus, the sol-gel method is a promising technique to coat the complex geometries of the HSS tools.