Cutting Materials Of Ultra Hardness

Posted on | June 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Super hard materials are the result of modern research and development. The past 100 years had seen extra ordinary growth in many fields of science and technology including material technology. The recent developments in science and technology resulted in the use of very hard materials in mechanical, automobile, metal stamping and aviation industries. This in turn resulted in the development of new ultra hard cutting materials to make cutting tools to machine these parts. Other than carbide cutting tools several other super hard materials like ceramic, polycrystalline diamond (PCD), mono-crystalline diamond (MCD-natural diamond), diamond coatings on cutting tools, synthetic mono-crystalline diamonds as well as polycrystalline cubic boron nitrite are developed.

Extreme Hard Metals
Correct use and applications of cutting tools made out of these ultra hard materials will result in considerable timing saving, higher life of Cutting tools, high cutting speeds, improved accuracy, improved surface finish and can reduce the cost.
Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD)
Polycrystalline diamonds or PCD plates are made by high temperature and high pressure process where the diamond coating is directly combined with a carbide support. Polycrystalline diamond is made by sintering of superior quality diamond powder with metallic binder. Depending upon the usage polycrystalline diamond materials are available in various grain sizes. For example the diamonds with rough grain sizes are used for manufacturing cutting tools with higher resistance to wear and tear due to its ability to retain cutting edge for a longer period. Incase you need very high surface finish on machined item, and then super micro grain sizes are highly preferred.
Medium grain sizes are used for general all purpose cutting tools since it is a balance between high wear resistance of rough grain size and superior finish of ultra micro grains. This makes the medium grain sized polycrystalline diamond as preferred material for producing high quality metal cutting tools.
Natural Diamonds
Mono crystalline diamond or MKD is also known as natural diamond out of pure carbon. These natural diamonds enable the manufacturing of geometric defined flutes with absolutely notch free flutes. Natural diamond (MKD) is one of the ultra hard materials which are appropriate for attaining superior surface finishes for mirror bright surfaces, machining of non-ferrous materials, micro machining and machining of titanium without burr.
Synthetic Mono-crystalline Diamond
Further research and development resulted in synthetic mono crystalline diamonds which are obtainable in triangles and rectangle shapes with an edge length of approximately 8mm. The natural diamonds often contains nitrogen and it could have different hardness and heat conductivity. But the synthetic mono-crystalline diamonds have uniform structure with fixed thermal conductivity and less internal stress.
In modern industry synthetic mono-crystalline diamonds are being made in differents shapes and sizes which offers great application possibilities of this ultra hard material in future. Researches have found very good improvements in synthetic mono-crystalline tool life, improved surface finish and fixed wear and tear behavior compared to other super hard materials like PCD and natural diamond. Read the rest of the article on ultra hard materials.