Stone wear

[Diemaker]

I am not aware of diamond being used for machining steel, that is the domain of CBN, diamond does not like heat and CBN does. With our soft resin bonds I doubt the diamond is showing any wear before it is lost from either tear out or bond erosion.

 

[S.T.A.T.E.S.]

I am not aware of diamond being used for machining steel, that is the domain of CBN, diamond does not like heat and CBN does. With our soft resin bonds I doubt the diamond is showing any wear before it is lost from either tear out or bond erosion.

Thanks for the correction on the use of CBN. I attended a tribology lecture a few years ago where they showed electron micrographs of worn diamond crystals that had been used for some type of machining. Back in the day I was the plant engineer for a research facility that had a machine shop and it used diamonds, I thought, for making the tungsten carbide tools used for machining steel. We definitely used diamond dies for high speed wire drawing, but everything was immersed in a tank of water.

 

[Diemaker]

Yep, phenolic resin bond diamond wheels are used to grind tungston carbide. I use a lot of it to grind all kinds of stone, quartz, and ceramics. It is amazing stuff as long as you don't push too hard.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Yup. Diamond is commonly used for grinding various forms of technical ceramics, including solid carbides. It's in those applications where wear is most likely to occur to the diamond abrasive itself since the workpiece is made of such hard material. Although polycrystalline diamond may fracture in use and wear through that method, but it's kind of supposed to.