Micro-grinding characteristics of polycrystalline diamond tool

The polycrystalline diamond (PCD) tools undergo series of manufacturing processes such as the following: grinding to form the required shape and polishing to give a fine finish. These operations are not straight forward as PCD tool is extremely resistant to grinding and polishing. Single crystal diamond tools can be easily ground by choosing a direction of easy abrasion, but grinding a PCD tool imposes serious difficulties as the grains are randomly oriented. Ground surface defects such as micro-grooving, edge chipping, cracks and gouge marks are often observed while grinding the PCD tools with diamond wheel. In this project, micro-grinding of a PCD tool was carried out with controlled normal force. The experimental results indicate that the developed method has produced ductile and partial ductile modes of fractures on the ground surface of PCD tool in the form of fine grooves and steaks. Also while applying a controlled force of value 66.75 similar to 100 N using a resin bonded diamond wheel on a PCD tool a surface finish (R (a)) of magnitude 0.05 similar to 0.11 mu m was achieved.