Are Diamond Tools Better Than Steel?

Are diamond tools better than steel?

 

Diamond tools are not necessarily "better than steel" in all scenarios, but rather "far superior to steel in areas that suit them, and inferior to steel in areas that do not suit them".

 

The core difference can be summarized in one sentence:
Diamond surpasses in hardness and wear resistance; Steel excels in toughness, impact resistance, cost, and applicable material range.

 

1 Hardness and lifespan

• The microhardness of natural diamond is about 10000 HV, which is more than 10 times that of high-speed steel. After being made into cutting tools, its durability can be increased by 250 times, and its grinding efficiency is 10000 times higher than that of silicon carbide steel based grinding wheels.

 

2 processing quality

• Diamond blades can cut chips with a thickness of 0.1 μ m, and the surface roughness Ra can be stable at around 0.025 μ m, while high-speed steel cutting tools can only reach 0.7 μ m.

 

3 Applicable Materials

• Diamond exhibits excellent performance in non-ferrous and non-metallic materials such as aluminum, copper, magnesium alloys, ceramics, glass, hard alloys, and stone; But when encountering iron-based metals (steel, cast iron), iron atoms at around 700 ° C will react with carbon, causing diamond to quickly graphitize and collapse, so it is "strictly prohibited" to process steel.

 

4 Resilience and impact resistance

• Diamond has high brittleness and is extremely sensitive to vibration, impact, and heavy load cutting, and can only perform micro precision cutting; High speed steel or hard alloy has good toughness and can withstand intermittent cutting and heavy impact.

 

5 cost

• The price of diamond blades is 10-50 times that of similar steel blades; If the working conditions do not match, the lifespan will be shorter and the overall cost will be higher.

 

Conclusion

• Processing aluminum parts, copper parts, ceramics, stone, composite materials → selecting diamond, comprehensively crushing steel with efficiency, accuracy, and service life.
• Processing ordinary steel, stainless steel, cast iron, and high-temperature alloys → using high-speed steel, hard alloys, or cubic boron nitride (CBN), diamond is quickly scrapped.