Superhard Materials
According to the definition of Wikipedia, a superhard material is a kind of material with its Vickers hardness exceeding 40 GPa, higher than any other conventional abrasive materials.Learn more
Synthetic Diamond Specifications
Guide for Synthetic Diamond Specifications
Type
Mesh:Coarse abrasive grain or media graded to specific mesh sizes. Mesh size is determined by the number of wires per unit length. A higher mesh number indicates a smaller opening or fine particle.
Micro:Very fine abrasive grain graded to micron size ranges. Micro size is usually based an average particle size.
Coated & Clad:It means a layer or layers of material are fully or partially bonded to the surface of the core particles physically or chemically. Processes for producing coatings include: chemical vapour deposition (CVD), physical vapour deposition (PVD), other equivalent hot or cold processes, plating, sol-gel or ceramic coatings produced using polymer precursors. The coating thickness can be anything ranging from a mono-atomic layer up to hundreds of micron, but typically range from 0.1 urn to 5 urn. It is of low cost, but can effectively improve abrasive’s grinding performance.
Metal Encapsulated:Metal encapsulation means the metal bond material is built up around the superhard material particle, which is completely enveloped by a sufficient quantity of bond powder. Encapsulation allows regular distribution of superhard material particles on tool segments without the use of placement machines.
Particle Shape
The particle shape of superhard materials affects their performance in various ways, such as the subsurface damage level and stock removal rate.
Angular:An angular abrasive has sharp but not weak, platy or needlelike edges, which ensure the quickest cleaning rate when removing tightly adhering material or contamination from the substrate.
Blocky:A blocky or rounded abrasive has mostly flat edges. The blocky shape enhances toughness and bulk density of the grain, providing good cleaning rate in most applications, except for those substrates with hard-to-remove contaminants.
Sharp:A sharp abrasive has much sharper edges than the angular one. They are generally required for producing aggressive and fast cutting coated abrasives, grinding wheels, etc.
Cubic:A cubic abrasive has a shape of three-dimensional cube.
Irregular:A variety of highly irregular shapes are possible through different manufacturing processes for specific applications. Typically, the irregular or crushed shapes are very angular with sharp edges for abrading, cutting or grinding.
Other:Other unusual shapes for superhard materials.
Metal Coated
A metal layer or coating is cladded on the surface of particles by Electrolysis and Electro-less coating, to prolong the life of Diamond (and CBN crystals). The coatings offer improved bond retention, aid in heat dissipation, and protection within the bond against thermal degradation.
None:No metal coating, or uncoated.
Copper:A copper coating is particularly effective in dry grinding applications.
Nickel:A nickel cladding provides enhanced bond retention and heat dissipation. Ideal for high force grinding, as it can withstand the highest RPM speeds, grinding forces, and temperatures.
Silver:Silver proves to be the best thermal conductivity of all coating materials. A silver coating not only enhances bond retention but adds lubricity and dissipates heat effectively. Usually for dry grinding applications, low-pressure.
Titanium:A titanium coating is known to adhere well to the matrix and also prevents reaction with H2.
Combo:A combination coating of several kinds of metals.
Other:Other metal coatings.
Grading System
Superhard materials are measured by different grading system standards that define a limited range of particle sizes for each grade. So the grit size designations are not consistent across different grading systems.
ANSI:American grading or grit size standards for superhard materials. ANSI stands for "American National Standards Institute".
FEPA:European grading or grit size standards for superhard materials. FEPA stands for "Federation of European Producers of Abrasives Products".
JIS:Japanese grading or grit size standards for superhard materials. JIS stands for "Japanese Industrial Standards".
ISO:International grading or grit size standards for superhard materials. ISO stands for "International Organization for Standardization".
GB/T:Chinese grading or grit size standards for superhard materials.
Other:Other unlisted, proprietary, or specialized grading or grit size system.
Applications
Resin Bonded Abrasives:This kind of grinding tools have a very wide applications,and more than 80% of the world’s hard alloy workpieces need it for processing, such as semiconductor materials, new energy crystal ferrite materials, building materials, ceramics, engineering ceramics, functional ceramics, glass materials, refractory materials, electrical carbon materials, non-ferrous metal materials, high hardened metal materials, as well as natural and artificial stone, etc.
Metal Bonded Abrasives:Commonly used metallic bond are copper and tin, some other metal powder, such as silver, nickel and zinc can be added to improve its performance.
Vitrified Abrasives:Its Application scope is becoming wider and wider with its consumption increasing. They are mainly used in the grinding and processing of diamond tool, cubic boron nitride cutting tools, carbide and new engineering ceramics materials coarse grinding, fine grinding and ultra fine grinding, metal ceramics, cast iron, ceramics, gems, ferrite, concrete, refractory materials, and fiber reinforced plastics.
Electroplated Products:It refers to deposit nickel cobalt alloy on the surface the metal substrate and fix abrasive diamond by electrodeposition. There is a great variety of electroplated diamond grinding tools of different shapes. To plate out qualified products requires diamond powder of different sizes, adapt technology and skills.
Lapping/ Polishing:Due to its high hardness of diamond and boron carbide particles, they play an indispensable role for machining hard and brittle materials, suitable for the grinding and cutting of high-speed steel, bearing steel, special alloys, etc. It can be applied to wet or dry grinding, while wet grinding effect is better.
Sawing Tools:It refers to all kinds of diamond cutting blade, including circular saw, gang saw and wire saw, etc. It is mainly applied on marble granite, concrete and other nonmetallic materials.
Drilling/ Milling Tools:Mainly include geological metallurgical bit, oil (gas) well drilling, engineering drill bit, drill bit, glass stone, etc.
Dressing Tools:Mainly include diamond grinding block, diamond wheel, diamond pen, cutter, grinding wheel cutter, and other dressers.
Wire Drawing Dies:They have been used widely in such areas as high precision wire in electronics, radar, TV, instruments and aerospace. Besides, commonly used tungsten, molybdenum wire, stainless steel wire, cable wire and all kinds of alloys are all made from diamond dies, which has extremely strong wear resistance and high service life due to adopting natural diamond as the raw material.
PCD/ PDC:Refers to Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD), or Polycrystalline Diamond Compacts (PDC) respectively. Consisting of micron-sized synthetic diamond powders bonded together by sintering at high pressures and temperatures, used for the precision cutting, oil & gas and hardrock mining industries.
Other:Other unlisted grinding, cutting, finishing applications.
