Patent 7799438 was granted and assigned to Mitsubishi Materials on September, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A surface-coated cutting tool comprising a cutting tool body, and a hard coating layer formed on a surface of the cutting tool body. The hard coating layer comprises an upper layer comprising chromium boride and a lower layer comprising a composite nitride containing Ti and Al. The composite nitride preferably satisfies a composition formula: (Ti1-XAlX)N, where X is in a range from 0.40 to 0.75 by atomic ratio.