The emergence of new ceramic cutting tools represents a technological revolution, marking the first time humanity has revolutionized machining through the application of ceramic materials. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, Germany and Britain began seeking to replace traditional carbon tool steel tools with ceramic cutting tools. Ceramic materials, due to their high hardness and high-temperature resistance, have become a new generation of tool materials. However, ceramics are also limited by their well-known brittleness. Therefore, overcoming the brittleness of ceramic cutting tools and improving their toughness has become a major research topic for ceramic cutting tools over the past century. The application range of ceramics is also expanding. The main reason for the engineering and technical community's efforts to develop and promote ceramic cutting tools is that they can greatly improve production efficiency; this is also determined by the global depletion of tungsten resources, the main component of high-speed steel and cemented carbide.
In the early 1980s, it was estimated that the world's proven tungsten resources would only last for 50 years. Tungsten is the world's scarcest resource, yet its consumption in cutting tool materials is significant, leading to a continuous rise in tungsten ore prices, increasing many times over in decades. This, to some extent, has also promoted the research and promotion of ceramic cutting tools, resulting in remarkable achievements in the research and development of ceramic cutting tool materials. Materials used for ceramic cutting tools have formed alumina ceramics, alumina-metal ceramics, alumina-carbide ceramics, alumina-carbide metal ceramics, alumina-nitride metal ceramics, and the latest successfully developed boron nitride ceramic cutting tools.