laser ablation


BUCK ROGERS BLASTS INTO THE TOOLROOM


Laser ablation to the rescue on super-hard tools


Ed Sinkora Contributing Editor


I


n addition to carbide, ceramics, and cermet, the drive to create the hardest possible cutting tool materials has given us the alphabet soup of PCD, PCBN, CVD-D, and MCD (polycrystalline diamond, poly- crystalline cubic boron nitride, chemical vapor deposition diamond, and mono-crystalline diamond, respectively). These latter materials are among the hardest materials known, natural or man-made, so they’re extremely dif- ficult to shape into usable cutting tool geometries. But new laser technology offers attractive solutions.


Grinding and Erosion Have Their Limits PCD and PCBN are the most commonly used super-


hard cutting tool materials. (“Super hard” referring to a hardness value exceeding 40 gigapascals in a Vickers


Ï An EWAG Laser Line Ultra uses a picosecond laser with a repetition rate between 0.4 and 1 MHZ to cut a chipbreaker into the flute face of a PCD insert. Only laser machining can create such features in super-hard materials.


AdvancedManufacturing.org LF11


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