Ink or tape to ease cutting of gummy alloys?

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Paper on it here:

Curious how it plays out long term — seems a nuisance to reapply for each pass.

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that’s interesting, I could purhaps see this being more likely to work with our machines, where we take very shallow passes than with rigid, industrial machines taking heavy cuts. If your taking even a moderately deep cut how should anything on the surface make a difference, even sub atomic particles struggle to get through atom thick slices of metal so sharpie ink or glue stick must be pretty magic if they can do it. I think these guys need to look into anything that might be influencing their results outside of their conclusions. In general, there should be more scientific studies repeating the work of previous studies.

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all that said have saved phys.org as a book mark, looks like a cool website

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Reading the brief (which I take with a large grain of salt, until I read the full article, which I can’t do from home… past history tells me a brief and an abstract do not make the full picture), I would suspect that reapplication will be needed for each pass. I am curious what the actual mechanism is (or are). Possibly that when the folding occurs, the packing at the surface is disrupted, maybe by preventing adhesion? Many gummy materials cut well until packing starts, and then it is goodnight Irene.

Not so bad on a CNC machine, as you can tune the feeds and program in scalloping, pauses, and minimal retractions to break the process before it runs away, but manual is a whole other story. A few years ago, there was a lot of noise (and a few patents) about a “new” feed method for lathes, where the feed would reverse briefly every few revolutions to encourage chip breaking and reduce packing. When I first saw the articles popping up, all I could think was of all the cams I saw for B&S screw machines profiled to do the same thing (though generally not every revolution due to mechanical constraints).

This appears to be new (to me). Much cleaner than the traditional flood the bejeezus out of it with magical mystery mix.

edit: It is nice having former students all over the place. Got access and skimmed the article, and the brief seems (surprisingly) to mostly cover it. Coating embrittles the surface, so free chip breaking can occur, rather than the folding and adhesion.

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