Microscopic wear study of the sintered diamond trepanning drill during machining alumina armor ceramics

High purity engineering ceramics have been increasingly used for constituting novel lightweight ceramic composite armors along with various FRP materials. In the assembly process of ceramic composite armors, a large number of hole processing is required. Usually, diamond trepanning drills are preferentially adopted for machining relatively large holes of engineering ceramics. However, during drilling high purity armor engineering ceramics, the diamond tools are usually worn considerably due to their high dynamic compression strength and high hardness. In this study, taking the high purity alumina armor ceramics (99 wt% Al2O3) as machining object, the comprehensive wear features of the sintered diamond trepanning drill have been intensively studied through SEM examinations, including the microscopic wear morphologies of diamond grains and matrix binding agent, the diamond abrasion mechanism, the wear disfigurations of the drill labial surface and the drill slipping mechanism. According to the discussed results, the wear process of the diamond grains at the matrix labial surface can be divided into three stages: intact crystal, slight wear and severe wear stages. The quicksand phenomenon occurrence around the diamond grains is the typical feature of the matrix binding agent wear. The normal grinding of the drill can be interrupted by the severe inner-trumpet-shape wear and the cutting-groove wear of the drill labial surface. In most situations, only the slight inner-trumpet-shape wear occurs for the drill, which does not affect the normal drilling operation. The drill slipping is mainly attributed to the fact that most exposed diamond grains at the drill labial surface have been rubbed down into a polished planar shape and totally blunted. The results achieved in this study can provide helpful references for the performance improvement design of the sintered diamond trepanning drill.