Hard steels are extensively used in gamut of uses such as aerospace,
vehicles and die and mold industries. These materials have high strength
and hard- ness which leads to a difficulty in their manufacturing. In
addition to the required high forces during the production by machining
and the resulting tool wear, it needs machine tools with high stiffness.
Such characteristics will result in a production cost that can reach
half of the product cost and high investments in addition to the need
for subsequent finishing operations. Laser assisted machining (LAM)
represents a new step towards a promising technique for machining
new materials that are difficult to machine. It offers local heating of the
work before conventional cutting takes place. Tool steel is an important
example of these materials. In this work laser assisted turning of tool
steel DIN 1.2379 is investigated. Nd:YAG pulsed laser head of 350
W power is used to assist conventional turning operation. For process
evaluation, a comparison of conventional and LAM was introduced
considering tool life, cutting forces. The influences of different cutting
speeds, depth of cuts and laser powers were discussed. The experimental
results showed a considerable increase of tool life, a reduction in cutting
forces, when using LAM in turning operation.