Abstract
The performance of wire-sawing of rock in vacuum has been investigated for future lunar and planetary explorations. The machining amount was decreased with a decrease of the vacuum pressure. Nickel to fix diamond grits on a core wire adhered on a rock specimen in vacuum and the rock was hardly cut in the end. In this report, the slicing performance was tested with various saw wires. The machining depth was increased with an increase of feeding speed of the saw wire in air. The machining depth in vacuum, however, did not depend on the feeding speed. The exposure of the grits from the electroplated nickel, large gripping force of the grits and increasing the pressure due to the low grit density increased machining depth.
