Polycrystalline Diamond （PCD） Cutting Tools

Development of PCD cutting tools

Diamond as a super hard tool material is used in cutting processing, which has a history of hundreds of years. In the development process of cutting tools from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century, tool materials were mainly represented by high-speed steel. In 1927, Germany first developed carbide tool materials and obtained widely used.

In the 1950s, Sweden and the United States respectively synthesized artificial diamond cutting tools, thus entering a period represented by super-hard materials. In the 1970s, polycrystalline diamond (PCD) was synthesized using high-pressure synthesis technology, which expanded the application scope of diamond tools to aviation, aerospace, automobiles, electronics, stone, and other fields.

Performance characteristics of PCD tools

Diamond cutting tools have the characteristics of high hardness, high compressive strength, good thermal conductivity, and wear resistance, which can achieve high machining accuracy and efficiency in high-speed cutting.

Application of PCD tools

Since the first polycrystalline diamond was synthesized in Sweden in 1953, research on the cutting performance of PCD tools has achieved a lot of results, and the application scope and usage of PCD tools have rapidly expanded.

At present, the internationally famous manufacturers of polycrystalline diamonds mainly include De Beers Company of the United Kingdom, GE Company of the United States, Sumitomo Electric Co., Ltd. of Japan, etc. It is reported that in the first quarter of 1995, Japan's PCD tool production alone reached 107,000 pieces. The application scope of PCD tools has expanded from the initial turning process to the drilling and milling processes. A survey on superhard tools conducted by a Japanese organization showed that the main considerations for people to choose PCD tools are based on the advantages of surface accuracy, dimensional accuracy, and tool life after processing with PCD tools. The synthesis technology of diamond composite sheets has also been greatly developed.

ZZBETTER PCD tools

ZZBETTER PCD tools include various grades and dimensional configurations. The product range includes grades with average grain sizes from 5 to 25 microns and a 62mm usable diameter. The products are available as full discs or cut tips in varying overall and PCD layer thicknesses.

The benefits of using ZZBETTER PCD are it provides reliable and consistent performance at a competitive cost. It improves fabrication ease, enables higher feed rates, and offers improved wear resistance for various workpiece materials. It features multiple grades with a tungsten carbide additive to the PCD layer, which enables toolmakers to electrically discharge machines (EDM) and/or electrically discharge grinds (EDG) faster. Its broad range of grades allows for flexibility in choosing the right material for any machining application

For Woodworking

Increase feed rates and improve tool life in woodworking applications such as medium-density fiberboard (MDF), melamine, laminates, and particleboard.

For Heavy Industry

Maximize wear resistance and reduce downtime in machining stone, concrete, cement board, and other abrasive workpieces.

Other Applications

Reduce tool costs and maximize consistency for a broad range of hard-to-machine materials, such as carbon composites, acrylics, glass, and many other nonferrous and nonmetallic materials.

Features compared with tungsten carbide tools:

1, The hardness of PCD is 80 to 120 times that of tungsten carbide.

2. The thermal conductivity of PCD is 1.5 To 9 times that of tungsten carbide.

3. PCD toolings life can exceed carbide cutting tool life 50 to 100 times.

Features compared with natural diamond tools:

1, PCD is more resistant than natural diamonds because of the random orientation structure of the diamond particles and is backed by a carbide substrate.

2, PCD is more constant in wear due to a complete production system for quality consistency control, natural diamond is a single crystal in nature and has soft and hard grains when made into tooling. It will not be well used with soft grains.

3, PCD is cheaper and has various shapes and sizes to choose from for tooling, natural diamond is the limit on these points.

PCD cutting tools are widely used in the industry due to their good processing quality and processing economy. It shows advantages that other tools cannot match for Non-metallic materials, non-ferrous metals and their alloy materials, and other cutting processing. The deepening of theoretical research on PCD cutting tools promotes the position of PCD tools in the field of super-hard tools. The PCD will become increasingly important, and its application scope will also be further expanded.