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The sheet metal industry is rapidly developing, now involving various industries. For any sheet metal part, there is a certain processing process involved. The processing and operation of stainless steel sheet metal require clear regulations. Depending on the unfolded drawings and batch sizes, different blanking methods are chosen. The methods of stainless steel sheet metal processing include laser cutting, CNC punching, shearing, and mold forming, among others. However, attention should be paid to the following aspects during the operation:

High cutting force, high cutting temperature

This type of material has high strength, resulting in significant tangential stress and plastic deformation during cutting, thereby increasing the cutting force. Additionally, the material has poor thermal conductivity, causing the cutting temperature of stainless steel to rise and often concentrating the high temperature in a narrow, elongated area near the tool edge, which accelerates tool wear.

2. Severe hardening processing

Stainless steel and certain high-temperature alloy stainless steels are of austenitic structure, which exhibit a significant tendency to work harden during cutting, often several times greater than that of ordinary carbon steel. Cutting within the work-hardened area shortens the tool's lifespan.

3. Easy to stick to blades

Both austenitic and martensitic stainless steels exhibit characteristics of strong and tough chips and high cutting temperatures during processing. As the tough chips flow over the front tool face, phenomena such as adhesion and welding can occur, affecting the surface roughness of sheet metal parts.

4. Tool Wear Acceleration

These materials typically contain high melting point elements with high plasticity, leading to high cutting temperatures and accelerated tool wear, necessitating frequent tool sharpening and replacement, which in turn impacts production efficiency and increases tooling costs.

Cutting Tube

During drilling processing, due to the poor thermal conductivity and low elastic modulus of stainless steel materials, hole processing can be quite challenging. To address the difficulties in processing holes in such materials, it is primarily necessary to select appropriate tool materials, determine reasonable geometric parameters for the tools, and set appropriate cutting conditions. When drilling these materials, drills made of materials like W6Mo5Cr4V2Al and W2Mo9Cr4Co8 are generally used. However, these drills are quite expensive and difficult to source. On the other hand, using commonly available W18Cr4V standard high-speed steel drills for drilling results in several drawbacks: smaller helix angles, excessive chip width that cannot be promptly expelled from the hole, and insufficient cooling of the drill bit. Additionally, the poor thermal conductivity of stainless steel leads to increased cutting temperatures concentrated on the cutting edge, which easily causes wear and chipping on the two back cutting surfaces and the main cutting edge, thereby reducing the service life of the drill bit.