Tribological and investigation study of a dlc-coated H13 friction drilling tool on AZ31B magnesium alloy

IntroductionFriction drilling is an innovative method in hole-making for sheet metal applications, thin sheets of conventional structural alloy materials like copper, titanium, steel etc., even though there are other methods, such as thermal distortion for the welding of nuts, riveting of nuts, and threading. For the last hundred years, researchers have focused on studying the development of this technique to maintain strength, hole roughness, hole geometry, hardness etc. It is interested in finding solutions for wear, tool life, and plastic deformation.MethodFriction drilling is also called a green hole-making process because this process uses the friction between the rotating tool and the workpiece. In this research, instead of regular HSS and Tungsten Carbide tools, the H13 tool steel is used, because the H13 steel tool has unique chemical compositions like chromium and molybdenum, which give high toughness, hot hardness, and wear resistance. Diamond-like-carbon (DLC) coating has been used in this research to enhance tool life and AZ31B magnesium alloy is used as the work material. Initially, in this research, the wear stability of the DLC-coated H13 tool was investigated, and later, the tool surface roughness and hole quality were verified.Results and DiscussionThe material loss observed for the DLC-coated H13 steel tool in the pin-on-disk test was 0.05 g. This investigation used two different diameter tools, namely 3 and 7 mm. Research has concluded that the 7 mm tool is better for friction drilling by seeing the roughness and hole quality. However, the conditions were that the spindle should rotate at 4,000 rpm and the feed rate of the tool to be at 200 mm/rev.