Development of partially Ni-coated diamond abrasives for electroplated tools

Abstract

Electroplated diamond tools are developed for grinding hard and brittle materials because of its low wear resistance. To improve the grinding performance of diamond tools, a single layer of diamond abrasives is electroplated on the tool body. The electroplating process delivers a homogeneous layer with diamonds embedded in nickel alloy at high speed. In order to facilitate the adhesion of diamond abrasives, the diamond abrasives are coated by nickel membrane. Therefore, the cutting edges of diamond abrasives are hidden and the grinding performance of diamond tools decreases. Moreover, a phenomenon of abrasive aggregation generates and leads to bad abrasive distribution. In this paper, in order to solve those problems, authors developed partially Ni-coated diamond abrasives, which were produced from the commercially available full Ni-coated diamond abrasives. The adhesion characteristics of partially Ni-coated diamond abrasives were discussed, too. The grind-abilities of diamond tools, which are fabricated with using non-coated diamond abrasives, Ni-coated diamond abrasives and partially Ni-coated diamond abrasives, have been evaluated. As the results, the problems when using non-coated diamond abrasives or Ni-coated diamond abrasives could be solved and the grind-abilities of electroplated tools were improved with using partially Ni-coated diamond abrasives.