Polycrystalline diamond cutting element control using high frequency C-scan image processing

The quality control of drilling tools used in the oil industry essentially consists of testing the cutting elements distributed around the petroleum tool. This study presents a nondestructive testing (NDT) method for the detection of different kinds of defects inside polycrystalline diamond cutting elements (PDC). This ultrasonic method, based on high frequency (100 MHz) C-scan image processing, allows the detection of three major types of defect such as diamond layer debonding from the substrate, cracks and thermal defects of the diamond layers. These defects induce a perfectly quantified behaviour to mechanical abrasion resistance and fatigue tests. Experimental results show good correlation between our ultrasonic measurements and classical abrasion resistance tests. In fact, a PDC sample exhibiting defects detected by the C-scan technique has been submitted to a mechanical fatigue process and optical microscopic analysis. These tests have shown that each kind of defect has an influence on one or more mechanical characteristics. Using C-mode scanning acoustic microscopy (with a 50 μm pixel size), allows an extremely precise and quantified level of erosion resistance of the cutting elements without systematic resort to expensive destructive tests carried out during the reception of the batch. The rejection of samples showing harmful defects will eliminate the erratic and sometimes unexplained destruction of some tools which were considered to be defect-free.