CVD diamond grinding tools for precision grinding of hard and brittle materials

CVD diamond layers have demonstrated their high potential as abrasive layer for grinding tools. Besides the achieved superb workpiece surface quality further important advantage are the Iow wear rates of the tool. Wear rates of CVD diamond layers were up to 80 times lower compared to wear rates of standard fine grained diamond grinding wheels leading to an outstanding tool life performance. Additionally, it has been shown that worn CVD diamond layers can be resharpened by an additional, CVD coating processes. The topography after recoating remains nearly identical to the initial deposition processes and the grinding performance is comparable. This paper presents grinding test results on optical glass (N-BAK2) and poly- and mono-crystalline aluminum oxide as well as the characterization of recoated CVD cliamond grinding wheels.