CCDia^®TopSharp

Sharp, sharper TopSharp

At the fakuma 2006 exhibition they were a small sensation – the Diamaze^®-PSD (Plasma Sharpened Diamond) blades from GFD, Gesellschaft für Diamantprodukte mbH from Ulm, Germany. Optimised with the CCDia^®TopSharp coating from CemeCon these blades are sharp, mirror-smooth as well as extremely wear-resistant.

Cutting blades are used in many engineering areas. When separating plastic and metal foils as well as paper, but also for cutting of rubber, textiles and leather these are being used. The customers requirements are clear: economic solutions in which a long service life and a high processing speed is obtained and this with optimum cutting edge properties. Depending on the processing task, today blades made of steel, carbide or ceramics are being used. Dr. Andre Flöter, Managing Director at GFD: „The requirements regarding cutting blades are increasingthrough adding dyes, whitening agents, fibre inclusions, compound materials but also through ever increasing processing speeds. The previously used blades are rapidly reaching their limits here, wear down all too quicklyand become blunt. The result is a more frequent and involved replacement of blades causing corresponding machine downtimes.“

Diamond coating for higher speeds

The solution is a thin and nano-crystalline diamond coating which already in the area of machining non-iron materials is providing for several years now spectacular results. It provides all important advantages of the natural material: Diamond is not only the hardest known material, it is at a low and medium temperatures almost entirely chemically resistant. It offers the highest known temperature conductance and has – this being of special importance during cutting operations – an extremely low tendency to stick with respect to most materials.

This combination ensures to the user a significantly longer service life of his tools and permits extremely high processing speeds. Cutting edges which are as smooth as possible reduce the cutting forces and result in less deformation of the material – an important advantage offered by CCDia^®TopSharp.

Already visually it appears much smoother, and with the aid of a process patented by GFD, cutting-edge rounding is minimised. Here also the surface is additionally smoothed during the sharpening process.
With these blades it is immediately apparent: instead of the black and grey surface seen in the past, the new mirror coating shines. This hard and smooth surface made of 100 % diamond material, i.e. without binder matrix, reduces once again the sticking tendency.

Sensational service life increase

Dr. Andre Flöter: “Our new Diamaze^®-PSD blades are currently attaining sensational increases in service life of approximately 1.500 % compared to ceramic blades when cutting plastic foil materials with pigment inclusions of titanium oxide, and up to approximately 2.000 % compared to carbide blades. Moreover, owing to the sharper blades, a smoother cut is attained thereby significantly reducing the amount of rejects besides attaining a higher processing quality. Also in the case of machining tools for processing non-iron materials there are some applications in which CCDia^®TopSharp can be used with excellent results. Especially in the area of precision machining, frequently very sharp cutting edges are needed since the formation of burrs at the component is a clear failure criterion. Using TopSharp, this can be avoided.

Source: FACTS 29 page 8-9

Photos: GFD