In recent years, PCD cutting tools have been increasingly used in the processing industries of aluminum, aluminum alloys, copper, and some non-metallic materials.
What are the advantages of PCD cutting tools in aluminum processing and how to choose the appropriate PCD cutting tools?
What are PCD cutting tools？
PCD cutting tools generally refer to polycrystalline diamond tools. The PCD composite sheet used is sintered from natural or artificially synthesized diamond powder and binders (containing metals such as cobalt and nickel) in a certain proportion at high temperature (1000-2000 ℃) and high pressure (50000 to 100000 atmospheres). It not only possesses the high hardness and wear resistance of PCD, but also has the good strength and toughness of carbide.
After being processed into a cutting tool, it has the characteristics of high hardness, high thermal conductivity, low thermal expansion coefficient, high elastic modulus, and low friction coefficient.
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Advantages of PCD insert in aluminum processing
(1) The hardness of PCD tools can reach 8000HV (80-120 times that of carbides)
and their wear resistance is very good.
(2) The thermal conductivity of PCD tools is 700W/MK (1.5-9 times that of carbides), which greatly extends the tool life due to its excellent heat transfer performance
(3) The friction coefficient of PCD tools is generally only 0.1 to 0.3, much lower than that of carbides, which can significantly reduce cutting force and extend tool life.
(4) PCD tools have small coefficient of thermal expansion, small thermal deformation, high machining accuracy and high workpiece surface quality.
(5) The surface of PCD cutting tools has a low affinity with non-ferrous and non-metallic materials, so it is not easy to generate chip buildup.
(6) PCD tools have a high elastic modulus and are not prone to fracture. The blunt radius of the cutting edge can be ground very small, which can maintain the sharpness of the cutting edge for a long time.
Based on the above advantages, PCD tools can process aluminum alloy materials at a very high speed, with a tool life of several thousand to tens of thousands of pieces. Especially suitable for mass production of high-speed and high-volume cutting (3C digital, automotive industry, aerospace field), such as processing digital product shells, automotive pistons, automotive wheels, roller rings, etc.
How to choose PCD cutting tools ?
Generally speaking, the larger the particle size of PCD, the stronger the wear resistance of the tool.
Usually, fine particle PCD is used for precision or ultra precision machining, while coarse particle PCD tools are used for rough machining.
Tool manufacturers usually recommend using fine-grained PCD grades to process silicon free and low silicon aluminum alloy materials, and using coarse-grained PCD grades to process high silicon aluminum alloy materials, for the same reason.
The quality of the surface processed by PCD tools not only depends on the particle size of the tool, but also on the quality of the tool edge, so the quality of PCD tools must be better.
There are generally two common processing methods for PCD tool edges, one is through slow wire cutting. This method has low processing costs, but the quality of the edges is average. The other method is achieved through laser processing, which has a slightly higher cost, but the quality of the cutting edge is much higher (there is also a method of first laser rough machining and then grinding precision machining, which has better quality of the cutting edge). It is still necessary to pay more attention when choosing.
Roughly speaking, that’s all. Other more specific details, including cost and cutting parameters, also need to refer to the specific product parameters provided by various manufacturers. Moreover, in addition to reasonable selection of tool geometry and cutting parameters, aluminum processing sometimes requires tool suppliers to provide solutions to problems encountered during tool use
Post time: May-30-2023