Investigation of machining and wear performance of various diamond micro-grinding tools

The wear of micro-grinding tools less than 1 mm in diameter is crucial for achieving acceptable surface quality and accurate dimension of the workpiece. To control wear behavior of the micro-grinding tools, an investigation through experiments was conducted on the machining and wear performance of various (D-shaped PCD, CVD, electroless plated, and electroplated) diamond micro-grinding tools on monocrystalline silicon workpiece in this study. The experiments showed that a CVD diamond micro-grinding tool had excellent machining performance, but its relatively large diameter limited its application range. An electroplated diamond micro-grinding tool had a good machining performance but displayed severe wear. To comprehensively understand its wear mechanism, a series of grinding experiments were further done. Its mechanism was analyzed through investigating the tool and machining process parameters. In order to accurately evaluate tool wear, the ratio of tool radius loss to average grain diameter (δ) and the ratio of the lost grain number to the total grain number (η) were proposed. The δ-ratio and η-ratio related to the wear limit of 600 mesh size micro-grinding tools having a diameter of 0.5 mm were 0.16–0.18 and 11.50–13.88%, respectively.