Diamond metallographic cutting blade, suitable for metallographic precision cutting machines and metallographic grinding wheel cutting machines, is a commonly used cutting blade in metallographic laboratories. How to effectively extend the service life of diamond metallographic cutting blades? Kemai editor has compiled the following experiences and shared them with everyone.

1、 Choose correctly based on needs

          At present, there are many types of diamond cutting pieces on the market, and the prices also vary greatly. A regular diamond cutting blade can complete about 1000 cuts.

          Kemai editor specially selected this QMAXIS (Kemai) diamond cutting blade for you. It is a diamond cutting blade sintered with advanced intelligent cutting technology from the United States, which can achieve thousands of continuous cuts for most materials. The blade has higher hardness, wear resistance, accurate cutting, less material removal, and minimal surface deformation, which can effectively reduce subsequent grinding and polishing time. Diamond cutting blades with different concentrations, particle sizes, and bonding processes meet the metallographic cutting needs of different materials and are commonly used in metallographic precision cutting.

          Example: 15HC, used for cutting metal composite materials, copper, aluminum, titanium, PCB, thermal spray layer, and bones.

          15LC, used for cutting hard and brittle materials such as ceramics, sintered carbides, silicon/boron composites, glass, rocks, alumina, zirconia, and concrete.

2、 Equipment selection and correct installation

(1) Correct selection of metallographic cutting machine: Pay attention to the power, speed, accuracy, and cutting ability of the cutting machine.

Metallographic cutting machine: refers to the cutting equipment used for cutting and preparing samples during metallographic analysis. According to the different requirements of metallographic sample preparation, there are certain requirements for the cutting direction, clamping direction, and cooling method when cutting samples. Therefore, various forms of cutting machines are designed for this preparation process.

(2) Correct installation: After installation, ensure that the saw blade runs smoothly and does not vibrate during the cutting process.

When installing, ensure that the working direction indicated on the blade is consistent with the rotation direction of the cutting machine spindle; Clean the contact surfaces between the blade installation hole, cutting machine spindle, and flange; Before cutting, let the cutting blade idle for a few minutes to confirm that there is no shaking or vibration before normal operation.

As shown in the figure:

Pulse Metallographic Cutting Machine METCUT-5--- (Laboratory Little Star)

3、 Understand the parameters for proper maintenance

A coolant: The use of coolant has two functions;

          Firstly, it plays a cooling role. Due to the friction and impact generated during the cutting process, a large amount of heat is generated on the cutting surface, and most of the heat is absorbed by the cutting blade, which is prone to diamond graphitization. At the same time, the steel substrate is also prone to thermal deformation.

Secondly, it is chip punching. When the coolant rushes towards the incision with a certain pressure, it will carry away a large amount of material chips, which is very beneficial for reducing the secondary wear of the diamond cutting head and substrate.

(Note: Due to different cutting environments and materials, good cleaning, maintenance, and rust prevention measures should be taken.)

Cutting blade linear speed: If the linear speed is too low or too high, it will accelerate the wear of the diamond blade, causing abnormal wear of the blade to accelerate, and at the same time, the cutting efficiency will also decrease.

          Low linear speed - When cutting, the contact time between the diamond blade on the saw blade and the material increases correspondingly, exacerbating friction, increasing heat, deteriorating heat dissipation and cooling conditions, and intensifying losses.

          Excessive linear speed - A decrease in the cutting depth of a single diamond per unit time results in a decrease in the friction and wear of the material against the diamond. However, at this point, the load of the interaction between the cutting head and the material increases, resulting in an increase in the loss of the diamond under mechanical impact.

(Note: Under certain other conditions, there will always be a better linear velocity for diamond cutting blades.)

Cutting productivity: (also known as cutting efficiency, which is the product of the cutting depth of the cutting blade and the feed speed, that is, the cross-sectional area of the cutting material per unit time, expressed in cm2/min or m2/hr.)

          For the same material, increasing both cutting depth and feed speed can improve cutting productivity, but the abnormal wear of the blade also intensifies, leading to a decrease in service life.

          Under a given cutting productivity, the size of the feed rate also has a significant impact on the wear of the blade. If the feed speed is too high, it will accelerate the wear of the tool head bond, causing the diamond to fall off prematurely; When the feed speed is too low, although the bond matrix wears slowly, the diamond is not easy to come out or be polished, resulting in increased cutting resistance and power consumption.

(Note: In actual operation, the speed of cutting in, out, and out should be slow; the speed during the cutting process should be uniform)