An experimental investigation on tool wear behaviour of uncoated and coated micro-tools in micro-milling of graphene-reinforced polymer nanocomposites

Nanomaterials such as graphene have been added to various matrices to enhance mechanical, thermal and electrical properties for various applications requiring intricate designs at the micro-scale. At this scale, mechanical micro-machining is utilised as post-processing to achieve high surface quality and dimensional accuracy while still maintaining high productivity. Therefore, in this study, the machinability of polymer nanocomposites in micro-scale (micro-machinability) is investigated. Graphene (0.3 wt%)-reinforced epoxy nanocomposites were fabricated using traditional solution mixing and moulding. The samples were then subjected to micro-milling at various cutting speeds using three different micro-tools, including uncoated, diamond and diamond-like carbon (DLC) tools. Mechanical and thermal properties of nanocomposite were also used to support the discussions. The result indicates that the DLC-coated tool shows better performance than the other tools for less tool wear, improved surface quality and less cutting forces.