Characterization of nanocrystalline diamond for cutting aluminium alloys

Nanocrystalline diamond has very attractive properties such as low friction coefficient, low wear resistance and chemical inertness. It also has a very high hardness. The characteristics of NCD makes it a good candidate for a wide range of tribological applications such as bearings, gears, cutting tools for machining non-ferrous metals, plastics, chip-board and composite materials. Hard carbon coatings are known to have good antisticking properties with respect to aluminum. In this paper, characterization experiments of nanocrystalline diamond for cutting aluminium are presented.