ORIGINAL ARTICLE Performance comparison of conventional and wiper ceramic inserts in hard turning through artificial neural network modeling Vinayak Neelakanth Gaitonde & S. R. Karnik & Luis Figueira & J. Paulo Davim Received: 12 September 2009 / Accepted: 3 May 2010 / Published online: 19 May 2010 # Springer-Verlag London Limited 2010 Abstract Hard turning with ceramic tools provides an alternative to grinding operation in machining high preci- sion and hardened components. But, the main concerns are the cost of expensive tool materials and the effect of the process on machinability. The poor selection of cutting conditions may lead to excessive tool wear and increased surface roughness of workpiece. Hence, there is a need to investigate the effects of process parameters on machin- ability characteristics in hard turning. In this work, the influence of cutting speed, feed rate, and machining time on machinability aspects such as specific cutting force, surface roughness, and tool wear in AISI D2 cold work tool steel hard turning with three different ceramic inserts, namely, CC650, CC650WG, and GC6050WH has been studied. A multilayer feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN), trained using error back-propagation training algorithm has been employed for predicting the machinability. The input– output patterns required for ANN training and testing are obtained from the turning experiments planned through full factorial design. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of ANN models to analyze the effects of cutting conditions as well as to study the performance of conventional and wiper ceramic inserts on machinability. Keywords Hard turning . High chromium AISI D2 cold work tool steel . Conventional and wiper ceramic inserts . Machinability . Artificial neural network 1 Introduction The machining of hardened steel components (45-65 HRC) has been extensively used to replace the grinding operations due to improvements in the performance of hard tool materials such as ceramics and cubic boron nitride (CBN). The possibility of eliminating coolant reduced processing costs and power consumption, improved material properties and productivity, flexibility in producing complex geomet- ric errors, ability to machine thin wall sections, and comparable surface finish are the major benefits of hard turning [1, 2]. Hence, hard turning is broadly used in many applications such as tools, dies, gears, cams, shafts, axles, and bearings [3–6]. The hard turning can provide a reasonably high accuracy for the hardened components, but the important problems occur with surface finish and tool wear [7, 8]. The generation of undesirable residual stresses and the forma- tion of tempered white and dark layers in machined surfaces affect the surface quality of the hardened compo- nent [9, 10]. Moreover, the cutting tools employed for hard turning are relatively costly compared with grinding, and hence, there is a need to investigate the tool life. V. N. Gaitonde (*) Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, B. V. B. College of Engineering and Technology, Hubli 580 031 Karnataka, India e-mail: gaitondevn@yahoo.co.in S. R. Karnik Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, B. V. B. College of Engineering and Technology, Hubli 580 031 Karnataka, India e-mail: karniksr@yahoo.com L. Figueira : J. P. Davim Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, Campus Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal L. Figueira e-mail: lfigueira@mec.ua.pt J. P. Davim e-mail: pdavim@ua.pt Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2011) 52:101–114 DOI 10.1007/s00170-010-2714-3