Technical Resource of the Cutting Wedge is the Foundation of the Machining Regime Determination

This article argues that cutting tool wear is not just a particular case of wear found in general machinery because the whole amount of energy required for cutting is transmitted through relatively small tool-chip and tool-workpiece interfaces causing extremely high contact temperatures and pressures. This article discusses a considerably different approach to the determination of the cutting speed based upon the energy passing through the cutting wedge. Moreover, it discusses that, for a given tool material/geometry, there is a limited amount of such energy that the cutting wedge can sustain before reaching the criterion of tool life. This limit is considered as the technical resource of the cutting tool. The article establishes and verifies the existence of the detect correlation between the works done in the cutting system and in tool wear. Based on this finding, the equations to calculate the cutting speed for a chosen tool life and/or the tool life for a chosen cutting speed are proposed. The concept of the technical resource of the cutting wedge is introduced as the total amount of work done before it fails.