Effect of laser surface texturing on the wettability of WC-Co cutting tools

During machining processes, a high temperature is generated in the cutting zone due to plastic deformation, resulting in an increase of wear and consequently reducing the lifetime of cutting tools. The addition of well-defined patterned surfaces with random or regular microfeatures to cutting tools can improve its wettability, providing an enhanced lubrication effect, a reduced tool-chip friction and a lower tool wear rate. In this sense, this work proposes a laser surface texturing approach of WC-Co green compacts to obtain different cross-hatched micropatterns, for enhancing these tools wettability. Results showed that laser surface texturing allowed to produce well-defined, reproducible and equally spaced cross-hatched micropatterns in WC-Co green compacts. A contact angle of 33.5° was obtained for the experiment with a groove and peak width of 250 μm and 3 laser passages, resulting in a 27% reduction, when compared with an untextured cutting tool (45.8°). This approach was found effective to improve the wettability of WC-Co cutting tools.