Benjamin Bergmann, a graduate of the Institute for Production Engineering and Machine Tools and currently working there as division manager, was awarded the Manfred Hirschvogel Prize at a ceremony held at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering''s Annual Academic Celebration on November 10, 2018. 5,000 euros in prize money have been awarded annually since 2013 by the Frank Hirschvogel Foundation in honour of Dr. Manfred Hirschvogel''s life''s work at all TU9 universities - the nine leading technical universities in Germany - for the best doctorate in mechanical engineering in the past year.
In his dissertation entitled "Basic principles for the design of cutting edge roundings", Bergmann deals with the question of how the tool life can be increased in terms of increased productivity and economical use of resources. His focus is on the cutting edge of tools. He wants to know how its stress distribution can be calculated depending on the material of the components to be machined in order to design the cutting edge rounding accordingly; two central parameters are the mechanical load stress and the thermal cutting wedge load. He succeeds: "On the basis of my model, I can now take the material properties of the component to be machined as an input variable and immediately know which cutting edge rounding I must select."
Advantages for tool manufacturers and users
With the new model, tool manufacturers can save a lot of time, effort and energy when selecting the suitable cutting edge rounding: compared to tool development, which was previously predominantly empirical using tool life maps, they now only need about one third of the wear tests previously required. The model also has advantages for users; Bergmann mentions three: "Process reliability increases because cutting edge chipping is significantly reduced; tool costs per component are also reduced because the process setting variables can be optimized; both also ensure a significantly longer tool life. Last but not least, the insights into the interactions between material and cutting edge load offer the possibility of thinking about the optimum cutting edge rounding at the same time as developing new materials".
The PhD thesis ist published at TEWISS Verlag.
