Laser assisted turning of hardened steel

A new machining method for turning of hardened steel is presented in this paper. It is a hybrid machining of conventional turning and laser heating of the material. As hardened steel is too hard to cut, it is grounded to improve its dimensional accuracy, though material removal rate of this process is very low and it requires relatively long time. By using laser-heating technology, hardness of steel can be reduced effectively, and thus turning is available for hardened steel instead of grinding[1, 2]. The softened area is limited in front of the cutting tool and then they will be cut away by tool, so no heat-affected zone was remained in finished surface. Pulse YAG laser was employed for heat source, and the parameters such as laser power and pulse durations were varied and the variations of cutting performances such as tool wear, cutting force, tool life and surface finish were studied.