Wear characteristics of hard anodizing and Ni-B coating deposited on Al7Si alloy and investigation of its milling performance with ZrN coated carbide tools

In this thesis, it is aimed to increase the wear resistance of Al7Si alloy, which is widely used in the manufacturing industry, with different surface treatments and to propose an effective cutting tool coating in order to machining process efficiently/economically. Accordingly, precipitation hardening heat treatment, Hard Anodizing and Ni-B coating processes were applied to cast Al7Si alloy samples. The structural, mechanical and tribological properties of the samples were characterized after the surface treatments. In addition, the machining performance of Al7Si alloy with uncoated and ZrN coated carbide end mills was investigated. The milling processes was performed to determine the actual working performance of the tools. SolidCAM i-machining module, which has become widespread recently, was used as intelligent machining instead of the tool paths used in traditional methods. After the precipitation hardening heat treatment, Hard Anodizing and Ni-B coating process applied to the alloy, the wear volumes were greatly reduced. The lowest wear volume was obtained for the Ni-B coated Al7Si alloy, which also achieved the lowest coefficient of friction. After machining studies, it was determined that the ZrN coating reduced the wear on the WC tool approximately 4 times and increased the workpiece surface quality compared to the uncoated tool.