Effect of soaking time on the physical, microstructural and mechanical properties of alumina ceramic cutting insert.

Machining has become a major cutting operation for producing various complex geometrical components in manufacturing industries. The challenging situations during the cutting process often occur when deals extra hard materials. In this current study, the effect of soaking time on the physical, microstructural, and mechanical properties of the alumina ceramic cutting insert was examined. The pure alumina powder was pressed using a uniaxial hydraulic hand press set at 200 MPa into pellets and sintered at 1600 °C with different soaking times of 10, 30, 50, 70, 90, 110 and 120 minutes. According to the current findings, the rising trends of the density value were recorded from 3.8468 g/cm3 at 10 minutes of soaking time until it reached a maximum value of 3.8983 g/cm3 for 120 minutes of soaking time. As a result, the lowest porosity has been achieved at the highest soaking time, which was recorded at about 0.340%, due to better adhesion and bonding within the particle. Therefore, the prolonged soaking time significantly showed the increment of hardness and indentation fracture resistance (KIFR) of 1667.91 HV and 6.35 MPa.m1/2, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]