Experimental and statistical analysis of the wear of diamond impregnated tools

Abstract Diamond impregnated tools are considered which are used to machine concrete. During their application, the bonding as well as the diamonds need to wear down in a certain way to gain a sharp tool. This required wear is called self-sharpening and means a continuous exposure of new diamonds. Within the development phase of diamond tools, time and cost intensive testing is necessary for the assessment of the tool performance. Hence, an extrapolation based on a minimal amount of testing is desirable to forecast the tool lifetime. A further reduction of the development and testing cost can be achieved by reducing the data needed to forecast the tool performance. Within this paper, the development of a statistical model is shown which was used to forecast the lifetime of the single diamonds on the tool. The statistical analysis is based on single segment tests which were carried out with different segment specification. During the tests, the exposed and broken out diamonds were counted to serve as the necessary input data for the statistical analysis. The counting of the diamonds on the segment was done in two different ways: based on the 2-dimensional microscopic pictures made after every minute of drilling and based on the 3-dimensional surface measurements made after every 5 min of drilling. It turns out that these two approaches of the wear analysis provide similar results.