Tool failure of surface-treated high speed steel tap

Abstract

When tapping carbon steel with a straight fluted taper pipe tap for NPT threads, the cutting section is often prone to fracture on the thread part because of the increase in chip thickness, which causes the chip to jam as the tapping process proceeds. When tapping carbon steel with a high speed steel tap (HISS tap), this adversely affects the tapping operation due to the low cutting speed. Increasing the cutting speed is effective to ensure a highly efficient tapping operation. In this study, a tapping test was conducted on a Cr-Mo steel SCM435 using various kinds of surface treated HISS tap, namely untreated taps (HISS tap), oxide treated taps, TiN coated taps, TiCN coated taps and AlCrN coated taps, to determine the effective tool material for high efficiency tapping. The main results obtained are as follows: (1) The higher cutting speed was determined to be effective in preventing fracture of the cutting part on the thread part of the tap because the chip formed both a slimmer and spiral shape when tapping at high cutting speed. (2) The AlCrN coated HISS tap showed the best wear resistance. (3) The AlCrN film had both a lower friction coefficient and higher hardness compared with the TiN or TiCN film.