Materials for cutting tools

Cutting tools are instruments designed to work materials by removing chips. It seems that the first tools obtained by forging before the beginning of the Christian era were the chisel, the burin, and the snake-tongue drill, followed by the file and the saw.

With the advent of the lathe, the comb enabled the creation of threading tools: taps and then dies. Until the end of the 19th century, all tools were manufactured either by forging and machining, or by machining alone. The cutting material was molten steel.

During the 20th century, new materials (high-speed steels, metal carbides, ceramics, cermets, diamonds, etc.) appeared, along with shaping techniques such as casting, grinding, powder metallurgy, and coatings, all of which provided increasingly effective tools.

The 21st century has also begun with significant technological advances in the field of cutting tool materials. No new materials have been created (as yet), but some existing materials have been greatly improved.

From a technical and economic standpoint, it is widely accepted that productivity has tripled since around 2005 thanks to improvements in cutting tools, machines, CAM, etc. This article describes all the technological advances in cutting materials.