Deposition and Application of CVD Diamond Films on the Interior-Hole Surface of Silicon Carbide Compacting Dies

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a promising material for fabricating wire compacting dies due to its advantages of light weight and even high wear resistance over the tungsten carbide, which currently is the most popular material used to produce compacting dies. In present study, a layer of CVD diamond film is deposited on the interior-hole surface of compacting dies using the hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) method, following by a surface polish process, aiming at further elongating the lifetime of compacting dies and improving the surface quality of produced wires. The characterization of both as-deposited and polished CVD diamond films is employed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), surface profiler, Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy. Furthermore, the performance of as-fabricated CVD diamond coated compacting dies is examined in the real production process. The results exhibit that the as-deposited CVD diamond films are homogeneous and their surface finish is significantly smoothened after the surface polish process. As compared with the conventional compacting dies, the working lifetime of the diamond coated SiC compacting dies can be increased by a factor of above 15 and in the course of processing, copper stranded wires with high surface quality and uniform sectional area can be obtained.