Production parameters and materials selection of powder metallurgy diamond tools

Abstract

The methods of making diamond impregnated cutting tools have undergone a fantastic development since the invention of synthetic diamond in the 1950s. The last five decades witnessed a spectacular, >50fold, increase in the total consumption of industrial diamond. Over this time, modern production techniques based on diamond tooling have been implemented into various areas of industrial activity enabling to do the job faster, more accurately and at less cost. They revolutionised machinery and processing techniques in the stone and construction industries, road repair, petroleum exploration, production of glass, dense ceramics, etc. In the production volume terms, by far the largest group of diamond tools comprises the so called 'metal bonded' diamond impregnated tools such as circular and frame saw blades, wire saws and core drills for cutting natural stone and construction materials, as well as core bits for drilling in medium to hard rock formations. The role of powder metallurgy (PM) in the production of the above mentioned tools is the main focus in the present article, which identifies their main application areas and provides a compendious coverage of the fundamentals of tool design, availability of raw materials and relevant PM fabrication routes.