Material removal in grinding sapphire wafers with brazed–diamond pellet plates

Abstract

ABSTRACTGrinding is an important abrasive machining process in many manufacturing chains. In order to improve the material removal in the grinding of sapphire wafers, this study presents two brazed-diamond pellet (BDP) plates developed with different BDP surface textures, i.e., a non-grooved BDP plate and a grooved BDP plate. Their performances were tested in the coarse grinding of sapphire wafers. The surface topography, surface roughness, material removal rate (MRR) were comprehensively investigated. The experimental results show that sapphire is removed in its brittle mode. However, the grooved BDP plate can produce lower surface roughness under a higher MRR. The improvement in surface roughness is mainly due to the better coolant flowability and chip removal facilitated by the grooves. The higher MRR is partly due to the increased pressure in the sapphire-plate contact zone. It is found that the grooved BDP plate can increase MRR by about 45.7%.