Abstract
A type of disc-on-plate test methodology was used to determine the wear behavior of metallic binders employed in the manufacturing of diamond impregnated tools. The disc consists of a special circular wheel that allows the binder materials alone (i.e., without diamond, but sintered under conditions identical to those of the complete tool) to be tested against a plate of stone material under pre-determined testing conditions. The testing conditions are intended to be equivalent to those used in the industrial processes. Using plates of five types of granite and one type of marble, this work comprises wear tests of 15 different types of metallic binders and two sintering modes conducted under, at least, three different values of contact-force. The analysis of the results demonstrated that the wear of the binders can be related to their mechanical properties through an empirical expression. The larger the difference between the characteristics of the tribological pair (binder versus stone), the higher is the correlation between the experimental wear data and the values given by the empirical expression. The relationships presented in this work allow predicting the wear behavior of the binder, and therefore may help in the design process of diamond tools. There was a clear difference between the wear behavior of metallic binders when they were employed against the two main classes of stone under analysis (marble and granite).
Highlights
The following graphical representations show the overall results obtained during this work, either using the test rig for binders produced as segments (Figure 4)
As may be observed from the plots, all cases show a great linearity between (F) and (V). This demonstrates that the test methodology is, useful to evaluate the wear in the binder caused by each stone material, and that it is sensitive to wear variation when different contact conditions are established
The results indicate that the tribological pair may not fulfil one important requirement of the present test methodology: the marble is being worn during the contact with the binder, modifying the type of contact, and the inherent wear mechanism
Summary
The act of cutting a stone may be defined as a process involving the removal of a pre-defined quantity of material carried out by a particle in motion (normally defined as the abrasive particle). The process usually employs very hard granular particles, such as diamond, and each particle plays a critical role by driving the breakage of a, usually small, amount of stone material after being forced into the surface of the workpiece. We may divide the several operations dealing with stone cutting into the production processes that are usually part of a transformation activity. The first (primary) transformation processes are employed to slab a block coming from a quarry into smaller volumes that are cut into consistent sections (slabs). Secondary transformation processes normally deal with these large slab sections obtained from the blocks
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