Artificial diamond for grinding wheel dressing tools
August 26, 2022
In the dressing process of the grinding wheel, the use of synthetic diamond dressing tools is often the best alternative to natural diamond dressing tools. The reason is that the use of synthetic diamond dressing tools can ensure a stable and consistent dressing quality of the dressing process of the grinding wheel.
This is a key conclusion from Mr. William D. James, a product engineer in the fixed tool group of Saint-Gobain Abrasives, on synthetic diamond dressing tools.
According to Mr. James, from the outset he believed that the synthetic diamond tool was a more stable product because it allowed the structure to be more precisely controlled by the manufacturing process, and its quality was foreseen in advance. At present, a variety of precision-sized diamond tools are available on the market, which are uniformly rectangular in shape and longer than the longest extending natural diamond. As he explained, the diamond used in all dressing tools, whether natural or synthetic, will gradually expand over time. For natural diamonds, as the size of the wear surface increases, the problem begins to occur, and eventually the wear surface is too large to polish and trim the grinding wheel. As a result, the dressing tool cannot reconstruct the grain structure of the grinding wheel, but instead causes the grain structure to be closed, making the grinding wheel dull. The synthetic diamonds have a very uniform structural shape, so their wear surfaces do not expand to the point where they occur.
The non-blunt nature of synthetic diamond means that it never needs to be sanded like natural diamond. Similarly, longer synthetic diamonds have a longer service life than shorter natural diamonds. For these reasons, the use of synthetic diamond dressing tools can avoid two major obstacles encountered during machine downtime, work interruptions during tool indexing or replacement of the entire tool.
Mr. James divides the manufacture of synthetic diamond dressing tools into six steps:
1. Choose between single crystal and CVD (chemical vapor deposition) diamond. In fact, these two types of diamond work very well, and single crystal diamond seems to be more durable, but its price is slightly more expensive.
2. The size and shape of the diamond are specified. They must meet the requirements set forth in a particular grinding application and then determine the amount of diamond used. Unlike a single-point natural diamond tool, the same type of synthetic diamond tool can mount 5 diamonds or more diamond on the blade. In general, the larger the grinding wheel, the more diamond is required to dress the wheel tool.
3. Care must be taken to ensure the correct orientation of the diamond. Under normal use, they must be installed at a certain angle. Straight installation is only possible if the workload is heavy.
4. The tool must be configured reasonably. The louvers with multi-point diamonds must be mounted vertically so that when the tool is trimmed against the grinding wheel, the grinding wheel sees only a point of diamond width.
5. When dressing the grinding wheel, the appropriate dressing parameters must be used and the same parameters must be used. Synthetic diamonds use the same dressing parameters as natural diamonds, but if their speed and feed rate exceed the recommended requirements and overheating occurs, the synthetic diamond tool wears out quickly.
6. Mr. Ames said: “Whether or not synthetic diamond is used to improve the working stability of the grinding wheel, or use it to reduce downtime, operators should be prevented from interrupting production due to the indexing of diamond tools. In short, the application prospect of synthetic diamond dressing tools It is very useful."