High-speed steel (HSS) tools account for 20 percent of the cutting tools materials' global market. This is due to both their significant toughness and resistance to cracking, compared to cemented carbides. Covering steel tools with hard coatings clearly improves their mechanical properties, wear resistance, and significantly increases their durability. Physical vapor deposition methods are preferred for coating metal substrates, as they allow low temperature deposition. The most widely deposited coating materials are carbides, nitrides, and borides. They are combined with softer ones in the multilayer structure to promote increased resistance to cracking and delamination in comparison to monolayered structures. In this paper, the M2 steel end mills were coated by (TiBx/TiSiyCz) x3 multilayer by the pulsed laser deposition method. Coated and uncoated tools were tested in the cylindrical down milling of AISI 316L steel. Components of the cutting force and temperature generated in the machined area during dry milling were measured under two variants of operating conditions: V1 and V2. Tool wear mechanism was examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), accompanied by EDS analysis of worn areas. It was found that milling with higher speed (variant V2) is accompanied by lower cutting force components and a lower temperature generated in cutting area. The presence of the coating allowed lower cutting forces and temperature in the case of variant V1. The temperature measured during milling did not exceed 200 °C. The SEM observation of the edges of cutting tools indicated that the main mechanism of wear for both types of tools was abrasion. The built-up edge formation was observed in the case of tools tested at the V1 cutting parameters variant. It was assumed that it was the reason for higher cutting forces measured during milling according to this variant. The chemical composition of built-up edges was different for coated and uncoated tools. Tribo-chemical reactions were responsible for the reduction of the cutting force and temperature components observed during milling with a coated tool at V1 variant. Boron and titanium were the elements of the coating that enabled the tribo-oxidation reactions thanks to which friction was reduced. Our results show that this beneficial effect occurs with (TiBx/TiSiyCz) x3 coated tools, but can easily be lost with inadequately selected cutting parameters.
Keywords: M2 HSS cutting tools; PLD; TiB2; milling force components; multilayer coatings; temperature during dry milling; wear.