Experimental Study on WEDM Machining of PCD and PCBN Compacts

Abstract

Some typical kinds of PCD and PCBN compacts are selected to be machined by WEDM, and a series of processing tests are taken. After machining, the surface roughness of cutting section, the processing quality of cobalt-rich interface layer and the edge of superhard material layer are measured by surface profiler and 3D microscope. The results show that processing quality is affected by superhard particle size and concentration greatly, and better processing quality can be obtained after several cutting of WEDM. The minimum sharpening allowance of PCD cutting tools can be controlled within 4~15μm after WEDM, and within 10μm for PCBN BNX20, while BZN6000 needs larger follow-up workload of sharpening.