Chip formation and surface integrity in diamond turning of porous titanium

Abstract

Titanium, due to its excellent biocompatibility properties, has become a base-material to produce the porous structure in medical applications. Increasing adoption of porous titanium has increased the demand of complex products with the high quality of surface where single point diamond turning process can meet these requirements. In this study, a range of cutting scale was carried out to investigate chip formation and machined surface characteristics in porous titanium compared to non-porous titanium using face diamond turning. The results revealed that chip morphology in porous titanium is remarkably different from that of non-porous titanium because of the presence of pores. As the cutting scale decreased, cutting mechanism changed which caused most pores to be closed on the machined surface, leading to a sharp drop in average porosity. The results also demonstrated that phase transformations occurred during the cutting process, leading to an increased hardness on the machined surface. Additionally, the results indicated that there is the possibility of direct fabrication of precision surfaces of porous titanium by using the diamond turning