Or the hardest materials in general. I mean, doesn’t the process require one material to be harder than the one that’s being machined? But if you’re machining the toughest material there is, how does it work?
In: Engineering
No, it isn’t required to be harder than what’s being machined.
Hardness is basically measured by how much a substance “dents” or get scratched. The deeper a scratch, the “softer” the material is considered to be. Everything can be dented / scratched. Including diamond. It’s not that steel, as example, cannot scratch or dent diamond, it’s that it cannot scratch it as deeply as diamond can.
Will you wear out inserts when machining diamond? Very quickly, indeed. But by controlling the heat trasference and chip breaking, you can definitely machine diamond with “softer” metals.
Machining itself is not completely about just one thing cutting into another thing like you’d cut bread. There are many scientific factors involved. Most “metal cutting” is actually done with immense heat. When we cut steel with steel or carbide tools, the steel actually heats up so much that, without coolant, it discolors the chips (pieces of cut-away steel that fall down and are discarded).
Coolant helps protect the life of the cutting tool by keeping almost all of the heat at the tip of the tool, “on the cutting edge.” Also, chips carry the heat away with them when they fall.
The heat is part of the cutting process. Machining takes place at great speeds in metal cutting to capitalize on friction and heat to make the cutting easier, smoother, and faster. If you or I sat down and tried to use a tool to do the job of a milling machine, we would accomplish very little and in far, far more time.
Inserts for milling and turning employ various “chip breakers” and other technology in the tool inserts to maximize cutting efficiency. The same goes with diamond cutting–it’s not merely about taking another material and applying it to the diamond like a knife in bread. There are also elements of motion, force, heat, friction, etc.
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