VOLUME 18

ISSUE 1-2

of Achievements in Materials
and Manufacturing Engineering

SeptemberOctober

2006

Surface integrity of hardened steel

parts in hybrid machining operations
W. Grzesik a,*, J. Rech b, T. Wanat a
a Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Production Automation,
Technical University, Opole, Poland
b Laboratory of Tribology and Systems Dynamics, ENISE, Saint-Etienne, France
* Corresponding author: E-mail address: grzesik@po.opole.pl
Received 15.03.2006; accepted in revised form 30.04.2006

Manufacturing and processing

Abstract
Purpose: Purpose of this paper is the investigation of surface integrity generated in hard turning and subsequent
finish abrasive machining. The primary reason for undertaking this problem was insufficient magnitude of
compressive residual stresses after hard turning which determines the fatigue resistance of highly loaded
transmission parts.
Design/methodology/approach: Methodology employed uses 2D and 3D description of the surface roughness/
surface microstreometry and the X-ray diffraction method for measurements of residual stresses. The main scope
of this research program is to record the relevant changes of surface layer features resulting from the application
of finish abrasive passes.
Findings: Findings can be distinguished into two groups. First, finish belt grinding produces the residual
stresses with the maximum value of1000 MPa, which is satisfactory for improving fatigue life. Second, the
bearing properties improve due to displaying negative values of the skew.
Research limitations/implications: Research limitations deal with the identification range of 3D roughness
parameters and the lack of modern equipment for robust measurements of residual stresses: Future research
should be focused on the stronger correlation between technological and exploitation properties of the surfaces
produced by hard and abrasive technologies. However, it needs more detailed inputs from automotive industry.
Practical implications: Practical implications are related to the automotive industry, especially to manufactures
of such transmission elements as synchronizing cones/planes on gear wheels. The sequences of new hybrid
machining processes are partly verified in terms of industry needs (machining conditions, machine tools, special
equipment, cutting and abrasive tools).
Originality/value: Originality of this industryoriented contribution is based on the aggregating hard cutting
and abrasive machining processes. The practical value of the paper is that it proposes a very beneficial machining
process for highly loaded hardened parts.
Keywords: Machining; Hybrid process; Surface roughness; Residual stress

1. 
Introduction
1. Introduction
Hard turning (HT) of steel workpieces harder than 60 HRC
with mixed ceramic and PCBN cutting tools can be essentially
performed as rough, precision, and high precision operation when
the Rz parameter is less than 1 Pm [1,2]. Precision finishing of
hardened steel components using superhard cutting tools offers

manufacturers an attractive alternative to traditional grinding. In

particular, it can often cut manufacturing costs, decrease
production time, and improve overall product quality [1-4].
According to many industry reports, hard machining (HM),
sometimes termed as hard part machining (HPM), covers both
turning and milling, generally semi-finishing and finishing,
operations. Gears and axles, and bearing components are typically

Copyright by International OCSCO World Press. All rights reserved. 2006

Short paper

367

Journal of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering

turned parts, while milling is preferable in the die and mold

industry [4].
Many previous investigations of surface finish in HT
operations with mixed ceramic and low content CBN (CBN-L)
tools documented only achievable values of the Ra parameter
about 0.2-0.3 Pm under optimal cutting conditions [5,6]. First,
complex multi-parameter 2D and 3D analysis of the surface finish
after hard turning has been done by Klocke et al. [1] and Grzesik
and Wanat [7]. One of the fundamental findings of this research is
that hard turning and grinding produce different surfaces related
to the form of profile and topography structure. In particular,
surfaces with negative skewness (Rsk<0), which indicates better
bearing properties, can be obtained in hard turning.
Despite many advantages of HT technology, the resulting
surface integrity produced on high performance materials is often
not sufficient for strong demands dealing with fatigue life or
pitting resistance. In these aspects the following limitations of
single-point hard turning can be distinguished, namely [1,8-12]:
low magnitudes of compressive residual stresses, the processinduced white layer which can lead to substantial variations in
component service performance, and dimension, geometric form
and surface roughness errors resulting from tool wear.
In conventional grinding-based technology, superior surface
quality and fatigue strength of gears, bearing rings, crankshafts,
camshafts, etc. is usually obtained by microfinishing,
superfinishing or honing . When using hard turning, special
abrasive finishing processes such as CBN grinding and belt
grinding are proposed for machining synchronizing cones/planes
on gearweels [8,13]. As reported [8,13], additional belt grinding
allows generating higher compressive tangential residual stresses
localized at the distance of a few microns from the surface, and
removing partly or completely white layer.
So far, surface finish after hybrid processes have not been
studied. Therefore, the paper deeply investigates surface finish on
the hardened bearing steel parts produced by hard turning
operations, and that resulting from additional abrasive operations.

2. 
Experimental
program
2. Experimental
program
2.1. 
Machine
tools
machining
2.1. Machine
tools
and and
machining
conditions
conditions
In this study, CBN turning was carried out on an ultraprecision facing lathe with special construction features, such as
granite body, the thermally controlled, direct tool clamping on the
table, and the chuck and jaws with improving rigidity and
accuracy. A CNC lathe was equipped with Siemens 840D control
system in order to reduce the displacement down to 0.1 m. The
triangular 60% CBN (Sandviks 7020 grade) inserts were used in
these hard turning tests, named as HT1. The cutting edges of each
tip were prepared to produce a chamfer with 0.1 mm width, 200
inclination angle, and the honing radius of 0.05 mm. Cutting
parameters used were: cutting speed vc = 100 m/min, feed rate f =
0.1 mm/rev, and depth of cut ap = 0.3 mm. For comparison, hard
turning operations (HT2) with mixed ceramic (Sandviks CC650
grade) tools [7,14,15] were carried out on a precision
conventional lathe. In this case cutting speed vc = 115 m/min, feed
rate f = 0.1 mm/rev, and depth of cut ap = 0.3 mm.

368

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Volume 18 Issue 1-2 SeptemberOctober 2006

In the first variant, belt grinding operations with 30m (BG1)

and 9 m (BG2) grains were performed after PCBN turning
(HT1) on a special device mounted on the lathe during 9 sec
under MQL conditions [8]. The process conditions were as
follows: rotation speed of the workpiece of 900 rev/min, belt feed
of 0.6 mm/s, 2 bars pressure between the workpiece and the belt,
axial oscillation of 12 Hz and 1 (r0.5) mm in amplitude.
In the second variant, the turned surfaces (HT2) were
abrasively finished with 29m grain stones (reference
99A320N10V) using coolant containing 85% kerosene and 15%
machine oil. During superfinishing (SF) the oscillation frequency
of 680 osc/min; applied force of 40N and amplitude of 3.5 mm
were kept.

2.2. Measurements of surface

2.2. Measurements
roughness of surface roughness
A set of the 2D and 3D roughness parameter measurements
was carried out by means of a TOPO 01P profilometer with a
diamond stylus radius of 2 Pm [7,14]. The scanned areas of 4x4
mm and 1.25x1.25 mm were selected. Cut-off length was set to
0.8 mm (the evaluation length was equal to ln=4.8 mm) and 0.25
mm (corresponding ln=1.5 mm) according to ISO 4288, and the
ISO 2CR filter was selected. In summary, selected height
(Ra,Rz,Rp, Rv, Sa, Sz, Sp, Sv), spacing (RSm), angle (R'q) and
profile height distribution (Rsk, Rku, Rmr(c)) were measured.
Correspondingly, in order to reflect the specific properties of the
surfaces generated, amplitude distribution functions (ADFs),
bearing area curves (BACs), surface topographies, and contour
maps for the four surface types selected were determined.

2.3. 
Measurements
of residual
2.3. Measurements
of residual
stresses
stresses
The residual stresses were measured using an X-ray
diffractometer. It was a Philips X'Pert MRD system with
a horizontal, high-resolution -2 goniometer [16]. The biaxial
residual stress with tangential (V11) and axial (V22) components
was considered as shown in Fig. 1

V 11
V 22

Fig. 1. Scheme of residual stress resolution in the specimen

This apparatus was operated at 40 kV tension, 40 mA current
(1.8 kW) using CrKD radiation (O=2.2897) and Bragg-Bretano
configuration.. The < tilts were achieved with :-goniometry,
tilting in the diffraction plane. Residual stresses were measured at
the surface and at different depths by successive etching ultra-thin
stressed layers up to 200 m. The RIM (X-ray Integral Method)

W. Grzesik, J. Rech, T. Wanat

Manufacturing and processing

was used to calculate residual stress depth profiles with accuracy

of r60 MPa.

3. 
Experimental
results
and
3. Experimental
results
and discussion
discussion
3.1. 
Height
spacing
roughness
3.1. Height
andand
spacing
roughness
parameters
parameters

PARAMETER Ra, SRa Pm

In this section, the changes of the selected roughness

parameters SRa, SRz, SRp, SRv, Rsm and R'q, resulting from
single hard turning operations and additional finishing abrasive
processes, were successively illustrated in Figures 2 and 3.
Figure 2 shows that both hard turning processes (bars 1 and 3)
generate surfaces with average values of SRa (Ra) parameters
about 0.35(0.3) and 0.45(0.4) m respectively. On the other hand,
belt grinding (2) and honing (4) reduce them to the values of 0.02
(0.02) and 0.35(0.3) m.
The SRz (SL peak to valley height) and its two components
SRp (maximum peak height) and SRv (maximum valley height)
are shown in Figure 3. This diagram clearly depicts that the
partition of SRp and SRv components in the total profile height
changes distinctly depending on the process variant applied.
0.5
0.4

3.2.  3D
visualizations
of surfaces
3.2. 3D visualizations
of surfaces
Typical topographies of the scanned machined surfaces are
shown in Figures 4 and 5. For these examples the 3D roughness
parameters were the same as reported in Section 3.1.

Ra
SRa

Fig. 4. Isometric view of surface machined with CBN tools- HT1;

SRa=0.35Pm

0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1

Fig. 2. Comparison of Ra and SRa parameters for HT1 (1),

HT1+BG1,2 (2), HT2 (3) and HT2+SF (4) operations
PARAMETER SRz, SRp, SRv Pm

decreases to 0.3 m but the ratio of SRp/SRv increases from 0.7

to about 1.
The average spacing parameter RSm decreases substantially
after both belt grinding operations, from 62.5 Pm down to 20.5
Pm for the operations with finer grains. In contrast, honing
operations reduce the peak spacing recorded after HT with
ceramic tools about 20% (79.5 Pm vs. 62.5 Pm). Moreover, both
finish abrasive processes cause the R'q decreases and oscillates
slightly about 4.

3.5

By analogy to the surface profiles, corresponding

topographies produced by CBN (Figure 4) include visible regular
sharp peaks. In contrast, the modified surface presented in Figure
5 contains randomly distributed extremely small irregularities of
SRz=0.45Pm.

SRp
SRv
SRz=SRp+SRv

3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
1

Fig. 3. Participation of peaks and valleys in profiles for HT1 (1),

HT1+BG1,2;(2), HT2 (3) and HT2+SF (4) operations
For example, profiles produced by HT2 operations (3) contain
lower peaks and deeper valleys, whereas those obtained in PCBN
turning (HT1) have higher peaks and lower valleys. In particular,
the final application of 9 Pm belt grinding causes the ratio of SRp
(0.15 Pm) to SRv (0.30 Pm) to be equal 0.5 (after previous
turning it is about 1.5). After honing (4), the SRz parameter

Fig. 5. Isometric view of surface after CBN turning and finish belt
grinding (HT1+BG1,2), SRa=0.02 Pm

3.3. Profile height distribution

3.3. Profile
height distribution parameters
parameters
Figure 6 compares the relevant changes in the shapes
of bearing curves. In all cases, the BACs have typical degressiveprogressive character. For example, belt grinding causes that the

Surface integrity of hardened steel parts in hybrid machining operations

369

Journal of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering

same values of Rmr(20) parameter are progressively recorded for

depths c=62% (2) and 70% (3), whereas for CBN turning c=38%
(1). Similar effect can be obtained after honing, for which
c increases from 54% (4) to 64% (5). Moreover, finishing abrasive
processes lead to negative values of skew (about -0.2 for BG and
0.5 for SF), which improve bearing properties of the surfaces.

Volume 18 Issue 1-2 SeptemberOctober 2006

Hard turned surfaces, treated additionally by abrasives display

negative values of skewness. This effect is basically observed for
PCBN turning and following belt grinding.
Belt grinding generates compressive residual stresses at the
machined surface in comparison to CBN turning. The changes of
residual stresses are localized in a very thin sublayer of~ 5 m.

References
References
[1]
[2]
[3]

Fig. 6. Differences in BACs curves obtained in cutting and finish

abrasive operations. 1-HT1, 2-HT1+BG1, 3-HT1+BG1,2, 4-HT2,
5- HT2+SF

3.4. Residual
stress
distribution
3.4. Residual stress
distribution
Figure 7 presents exemplary distributions of the tangential
residual stresses V11 determined in the sublayer generated in CBN
hard turning and belt grinding operations. It is clear from Figure 7
that the belt grinding results in higher compressive residual
stresses at the surface, similar to case-hardened steel [8,13].

[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]

[8]
[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]
Fig. 7. Distributions of residual stresses in the sublayer obtained
after CBN hard turning and belt grinding operations

[13]

4. Summary
4. Summary

[14]

Finish abrasive passes result in changing both height and

spacing roughness parameters. The ratios of SRp to SRv are equal
to 0.5 (belt grinding) and 1 (superfinishing).
It is observed that an elastic belt modifies both valleys and
peaks of the surface, whereas a rigid abrasive stone changes the
configuration of the peaks above the CLA.

370

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