The wear curves of nitrogen-implanted WC-Co indexable knives during particleboard milling

The paper presents the wear curves of WC-Co indexable knives during particleboard milling. The knives were previously nitrogen implanted to a dose of 1e17 cm-2 , at two different ion energies - 5 and 500 keV. The WC-Co composites with small WC grains (up to 0.5 μm) and low cobalt content (up to 2.5%) were used. These materials exhibit high hardness and, at the same time, low fracture toughness. Particleboard were milled using a CNC machining center. Longer tools life was obtained for blades implanted with energy of 500 keV. The catastrophic blunting (large chipping of the cutting edge) was more common for blades implanted at 5 keV ion energy.