Diamond Tools

Tools of all shapes and sizes are available, and manufacturers will supply data sheets about operational speeds and forces, and so on. Economy is high. For example, when tests were carried out on comparative lives of cutting tools made of steel, of sintered carbide and of diamond, in the manufacture of a bronze engine part, the steel failed after 1000 components, the carbide after 4000, but the diamond lasted up to 25 000. In terms of cost of tools the diamond turned out cheapest in the end, despite the fact that weight for weight diamonds costs 25 000 times as much as silicon carbide.

One enormous attraction in the use of diamond engagement rings for producing fine silky smooth finishes lies in the uniformity of the product right up to the end of life of the tool edge. Nowadays some special fine-grain, diamond-bonded wheels have succeeded also in producing very smooth mirror finishes on components. Such finishes are in high demand. It is possible to polish diamond itself with a bonded wheel. It is far faster than the traditional scaife. Unfortunately, a diamond polished in this way always shows chipped edges, so that the bonded scaife is not very popular with the gemstone polisher.

Superfine finish produced by specially shaped lathe-cutting diamonds is exploited in many industries, of which but a small selection include aluminium engine pistons, bronze bushings, calculating machines, lens mounts for cameras, components of microscopes, precision meters, Perspex components, manufacture of wedding rings, the components on watch faces, watch balance-wheels, and so on.

Diamond Tools

Correctly shaped diamonds can be gripped in a steel shank and used as lathe-cutting tools. They have four attractions, namely (a) they are so hard that they can attack the hardest of modern alloys, (b) they retain their sharp edges for very long periods of intensive use, (c) they are capable of producing superfine finishes, (d) they can attack all sorts of 'difficult' objects which give ragged results with conventional steel- or carbide-tipped tools. Diamond lathe-cutting tools are surpris¬ingly ubiquitous in the range of materials they can attack. One can turn and drill, on the one hand, soft metals like aluminium, silver and gold, and on the other, hard steels and carbides. Strangely enough they are admirable for soft rubber, such as that for the production of rollers for typewriters or printing machines, they are used for the turning of plastics, both soft and hard, and even for the processing of compressed paper rolls. Also check custom wedding bands. They are used extensively in the jewel trade, for turning watch parts and for smooth mirror-finishes on gold and silver. Equally, they are used widely in the automobile industry and can produce soft silky finishes on complicated alloys such as Babbitt metals, used for bearings.

It is necessary to set the cutting tool in correct orientation to present a hard edge and avoid cleavage direction, and this the manufacturer must do, yet the operative needs to use care. A damaged or blunted diamond (incorrect use. can chip edges) can be re-polished (by skilled diamond polishers only, of course) so is by no means a total loss. Lathe-cutting diamonds can be fastened into steel shanks by 70.