The making and performance of patterned-monolayer brazed diamond wheel produced with Ag-based novel active filler

Abstract

Present paper delineates a novel route adopted for successfully manufacturing single layer brazed patterned diamond wheels with enhanced attributes. A pneumatic pick-drop methodology is used for placing the grits in a uniform and patterned manner. Instead of commonly used Ni-Cr alloys, a novel formulation of μ-TiC inoculated composite Ag-Cu-Ti filler has been preferred, which helped in arresting crack formation at the root of grit brazement and simultaneously ensured high bond wear characteristics. Addition of μ-TiC particles substantially improved wear characteristics of basic Ag-Cu-Ti alloy but tend to impair its wetting ability on diamond surface with increase in its wt% in the composition. Therefore, its presence in the filler was restricted to only 2 wt% to keep such compromise within acceptable level. Wheels developed using active Ag-Cu fillers were further subjected to performance evaluation by grinding of WC-Co cermets. The operating parameters were changed in such a way that wheels experienced increasing order of grinding-aggressiveness. The degree of aggressiveness in the grit-work interaction has been defined by a unifying scalar quantity, termed as “aggressiveness number”. No trace of wheel loading was observed even in the most aggressive condition due to uniformly spaced grits. The failure counts of diamond grits are also related to this scalar. A detailed analysis is presented to address the suitability of μ-TiC reinforcement in the formulation of active Ag-Cu filler in the light of the grinding force and grit retention ability of the wheels.