Controlled Waviness Production Analysis Tool

Efficiency and consistency in Controlled Waviness tool manufacturing, will depend on many variables that need to be maintained within strict parameters. Working with diamonds, a material that is often highly inconsistent, it it quite difficult to keep track of many statistics that can be crutial to determining how efficient your production process really is. 


The form grinding phase of manufacturing is undeniably the most time consuming and unpredictable aspect of production and will also represent a large portion of the overall processing time. At DiamTech, as part of most of our consulting projects, we have developed a custom data collection and analysis tool that we believe to be crutial to any manufacturer that is seeking true manufacturing efficiency:


C.W.P.A.T. (Controlled Waviness Production Analysis Tool)


What is it?
The Controlled Waviness Production Analysis Tool is a custom designed data collection and analysis application that can be used to analyze many crucial aspects of controlled waviness tool production.


What can it do?
By analyzing the raw data that our clients provide, the resulting statistics can be used for various ways such as:


• Monitoring Progress & Performance
• Determining efficiency of any procedure alteration
• Establish statistic based production standards
• Serve as a diagnostic tool to help locate possible source of error
• Help create profitable pricing index based on production statistics
• Help provide more accurate delivery delays


What statistics can be extracted?
The following are some of the statistics that be determined for various given parameters:


• Total attempts with PASS and FAIL statistics
• Success Rate per category in %
• Average achieved waviness for PASS, FAIL and TOTAL
• Average roughing process duration
• Average finishing process duration
• Average total form grinding process duration
• Efficient Grind Time  
• Variables parameter fluctuation
• Variable Relativity
• Volumetric breakdown of workflow


We provide our clients with periodic reports that outline the key production figures and can also provide custom reports as per clients request.

http://www.diamtech.ca/#!analysis

Controlled Waviness Single Crystal Diamond Tool Manufacturing

Diamond is the most complex material to machine. Not only is it the hardest substance on earth, but it also has the most unpredictable internal structure. A structure that contains many different plane that can only be cut in specific directions. When cutting a single facet, finding the cutting direction will be fairly simple, however when trying to grind a 3 dimensional radius in the crystal, with sub-micron form accuracy it becomes a whole other issue.


Dependant of the radius sweep, you will most likely encounter multiple planes of the diamond, dependant of the angle of attack presented, these various planes will present various resistance to grinding. The key to efficient Controlled Waviness tool manufacturing, is to predict and anticipate locations of such opposing planes and take compensating measures to ensure minimal resistance variations within the total sweep of the radius.


Such procedure should be implemented as part of the pre-grind process to ensure that when the tool gets to the grinding stage, it will offer maximum chances of success on the first attempt at generating a controlled waviness radius on the diamond.


DiamTech has over a decade experience with observing and analysing diamond behaviour during grinding has developed a comprehensive orientation method that produces consistent, high yield ratio results on the first attempt. With delivery delay being a crucial aspect of the competitiveness in this industry, first attempt yield becomes a important aspect. 


Anyone venturing into manufacturing ultra precision controlled waviness diamond tools, will quickly be faced with the many variables that will play a role and define their production capability and efficiency, DiamTech can help propel you decades ahead with our in-dept, hand-on experience with dealing with all these variable. 


After all in our industry, nanometers often represent mile stones...

DiamTech.ca    

Precision Diamond Tool R&D

At DiamTech, we believe that in the precision diamond tooling industry, the key to advancement is through research and development. In a field that is already working with sub micron and nanometre tolerances, where form tolerance improvement of 1/10th of a micron represents a “mile stone” it can sometimes feel like true advancements are unachievable.
How do you predict the unpredictable? How do you bring consistency in a process that seems highly inconsistent? Research is the answer. A diamond’s crystal structure may be unpredictable but with experience, we have come to realize that by using a consistent manufacturing protocol and analysing the end results, modifications can be brought to the manufacturing process to obtain highly consistent and repetitive results.
We believe there is always a better way to do things. Observation of aspects such as tool wear pattern, crystal structure properties, form deviation analysis and thermic affects can provide clues that can result true innovations, helping to create tools that perform better and longer.
With the constantly rising demand for SCD tooling, most manufacturers are too busy with production or lack the man power to accord sufficient importance to R&D. Many theories can be assumed, but until they are proven with consistent results they will always remain “experimental”
This is where DiamTech can help, with our already broad knowledge of the SCD tool manufacturing process, we can assist or undertake almost any diamond tool relevant research project you may have in mind. We can even suggest fact based theories which we believe could potentially be the next “mile stone” of our industry!

http://www.diamtech.ca/#!research

Form Correction Compensation Software for Controlled Waviness SCD Tool Making

With SCD tool grinding machines with nano precision capability, one must question the value of available form compensation software offered on some of these machines. Is it really worth the investment?

Based on the years of diamond tool wear analysis, I can't help concluding that the hard and soft directions in the diamond's crystal structure plays a large role when it comes to wear patterns that form during the cutting process. A more consistent hardness through the sweep of the radius will produce a more consistent wear as opposed to a fluctuating hardness value across the sweep will produce a more uneven wear pattern that translates to reduced surface quality of the parts being machined.

Yes the form ccompensation software can help you produce controlled waviness tools with extremely low waviness by compensating for the difference in hardness value of the hard and soft directions, but how many cuts will your customer get with this tool before the wear pattern affects the surface finish?

I believe that it would be a much better investment to commit to research that would expose crystal orientations that would  represent a more consistent transition between the plane within the diamonds to promote the production of high precision diamond tools that would not only cut more consistently for the manufacturers, but also retain its precision form longer to result in better performance and longer tool life.  

http://www.diamtech.ca/

Natural Diamond or Synthetic Diamond?

For a long time now, I always wondered when it comes to precision diamond tool performance, if it really makes a difference if the customer are working with natural diamond tools or synthetic diamond tools such as sumicrystal or monodie. Some claim that tool performance will be based on what type of material is being machined, however most tool users require specific geometry that is better achieved on natural or synthetic and given that these two types of diamonds are generally used in two diffrent crystal orientation, is it fair to compare apples with oranges?

Sumi's or mono's are typically available in the 4 point orientation as for the natural diamond used in SCD toolmaking are generally prepared with the table in the 2 point orientation. So is it really the material that is being cut that dictates the compatibility or is it more the resistance value that these diamond represent when presented with the clearance angle required? For example, the jewelry industry claims that when machining platinum with synthetic diamond tools, tool performance is much better than when worked with natural diamond, could it be because these tools require very little clearance on the cutting edge and that synthetic diamond  will tend to offer a much more consistent hardness when ground with minimal clearance then natural which work better for higher clearance tools. This fact already dictates that the synthetic tool will offer a more consistent edge wear and wear induced form deviation when cutting platinum.

To truly be able to answer the question, we would have create tools using both types of diamond, but oriented in the same plane(2point or 4 point), but then again this also represents an issue given that most synthetic plates used originally come from a cubic stone as for the naturals, they are commonly from octahedral or dodecahedral origin. I have seen synthetic octahedral synthetic diamond on the market recently, perhaps this would be ideal stone type for some testing...

http://www.diamtech.ca/#!solutions