ISSN 0004-881X

Characterisation of Diamond Composites for Tooling

by J.N. Boland¹, X.S. Li¹, R.P. Rassool² and D. Hay³

1) CSIRO Exploration and Mining and MDU Flagship, 1 Technology Court, Pullenvale, QLD 4069, Australia
2) School of Physics, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
3) CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering, Private Bag 33, Clayton South MDC, Victoria 3169, Australia

Abstract

While diamonds are the hardest known materials in nature, they also have extremely high abrasion resistance which has been exploited to a limited extent in the mining, civil construction and manufacturing industries. An inexpensive abrasive wear test has been developed and applied in this study to assess the quality of a range diamond composite materials. The abrasive resistance of commercially available diamond composites is observed to span over 4 orders of magnitude. Microstructural and phase distribution studies of these composites indicate poor quality control during the manufacture of these diamond composites.

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