Yes, Diamonds are the (usually) hardest substance available for a variety of industrial applications.
Yes, they are found on everything from the tips from dentist’s drills, to masonry saw teeth, to the surfaces of angle grinders.
Is a diamond tip really that much more effective in most applications?
For extremely hard jobs, what’s preventing the diamonds from falling out of the much softer material they’re embedded in?
Wouldn’t the fail point be wherever it’s weakest?
In: Engineering
The diamonds fall out and break pretty quickly because technically they’re just glued on (resinoid bond) or embedded in the tool.
There are lots of other types of bonds that we use for abrasives, one of the most prevalent being the vitrified bond which heats an abrasive and bonds the grains together. You see this in AlO3 often (corundum) which is a 9 on the MOhs scale of hardness as opposed to a 10 for diamond.
I’m not sure what answer you’re looking for, but due to the hardness, diamonds are in fact quite brittle and therefore fall apart during use. Vitrified bonds take advantage of the grain falling apart to reveal new cutting edges, but I’ve never seen a vitrified diamond cutter.
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