Abstract
AlN-BN ceramics with BN contents in the range of 10 to 40 wt% were prepared by hot pressing using no additive, or 3 wt%, Y2O3 or CaO, which are common densification aids for AlN. And their machinability, bend strength, and microstructures were investigated. Both the main and radial cutting forces decreased with increasing BN content in all three kinds of samples. For the BN contents of 30 wt% or above, the cutting forces were lower than that of a mild steel tested at a same condition. Especially in the case of main forces, the values were less than a quarter of that of a mild steel, indicating excellent machinability. Bend strength (when the tensile surfaces of specimens were perpendicular to the hot pressing direction) also decreased with BN content mainly due to the much lower Young's modulus of BN compared to AlN. With the composition of 30 wt% BN at which the AlN-BN ceramics started to show better machinability than a mild steel, the bend strength was 150 to 160 MPa, which is greater than that of machinable glass-ceramics of a mica system. With tensile surfaces parallel to the hot pressing direction, however, the bend strength obtained for the samples processed with the sintering acids showed low values (about 40 MPa), since most BN particles had such orientation that their cleavage planes (i.e., basal planes) were perpendicular to the pressing direction.