Performance Evaluation of Diamond Tools for Micro-Grooving

Abstract

Electroless-nickel which exhibits excellent properties such as hardness, corrosion resistance and wear resistance is generally used for molding dies of optical parts such as LCD. Diamond turning is commonly used to machine such dies to achieve high degree of surface finish and dimensional accuracy. However, the tool life in such machining is quite short, especially so in machining of V-shape micro-grooves. Moreover no significant study has so far been carried out for very narrow angle grooves on cylindrical surface. In this study, performance of single crystal diamond tools with tool point angles of 45 and 60 degree are evaluated. The wear criterion is set at 1.0 micron nose wear for the cutting of 5.0 micron deep V-grooves. In order to evaluate the machining performances, cutting parameters such as infeed rate, cutting speed and lubricant material were varied. Finally the performance comparison of two types of tools was conducted.