MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY - II CONTENT BEYOND SYLLABUS I DIAMOND ABRASIVES An abrasive is a material, often a mineral, that is used to shape or finish

h a workpiece through rubbing which leads to part of the workpiece being worn away. While finishing a material often means polishing it to gain a smooth, reflective surface it can also involve roughening as in satin, matte or beaded finishes. Abrasives are extremely commonplace and are used very extensively in a wide variety of industrial, domestic, and technological applications. This gives rise to a large variation in the physical and chemical composition of abrasives as well as the shape of the abrasive. Common uses for abrasives include grinding, polishing, buffing, honing, cutting, drilling, sharpening, lapping, and sanding (see abrasive machining). (For simplicity, "mineral" in this article will be used loosely to refer to both minerals and mineral-like substances whether man-made or not.)

Files act by abrasion but are not classed as abrasives as they are a shaped bar of metal. However, diamond files are a form of coated abrasive (as they are metal rods coated with diamond powder).

Mechanics of abrasion
Main article: Abrasion (mechanical) Abrasives generally rely upon a difference in hardness between the abrasive and the material being worked upon, the abrasive being the harder of the two substances. However, this is not necessary as any two solid materials that repeatedly rub against each other will tend to wear each other away (such as softer shoe soles wearing away wooden or stone steps over decades or centuries or glaciers abrading stone valleys). Typically, materials used as abrasives are either hard minerals (rated at 7 or above on Mohs scale of mineral hardness) or are synthetic stones, some of which may be chemically and physically identical to naturally occurring minerals but which cannot be called minerals as they did not arise naturally. (While useful for comparative purposes, the Mohs scale is of limited value to materials engineers as it is an arbitrary, ordinal, irregular scale.) Diamond, a common abrasive, for instance occurs both naturally and is industrially produced, as is corundum which occurs naturally but which is nowadays more commonly manufactured from bauxite.[1] However, even softer minerals like calcium carbonate are used as abrasives, such as "polishing agents" in toothpaste.

Grit size ranging from 2 mm (the large grain) (about F 10 using FEPA standards) to about 40 micrometres (about F 240 or P 360). These minerals are either crushed or are already of a sufficiently small size (anywhere from macroscopic grains as large as about 2 mm to microscopic grains about 0.001 mm in diameter) to permit their use as an abrasive. These grains, commonly called grit, have rough edges, often terminating in points which will decrease the surface area in contact and increase the localised contact pressure. The abrasive and the material to be worked are brought into contact while in relative motion to each other. Force applied through the grains causes fragments of the worked material to break away while simultaneously smoothing the abrasive grain and/or causing the grain to work loose from the rest of the abrasive. Some factors which will affect how quickly a substance is abraded include:

Difference in hardness between the two substances: a much harder abrasive will cut faster and deeper Grain size (grit size): larger grains will cut faster as they also cut deeper Adhesion between grains, between grains and backing, between grains and matrix: determines how quickly grains are lost from the abrasive and how soon fresh grains, if present, are exposed Contact force: more force will cause faster abrasion Loading: worn abrasive and cast off work material tends to fill spaces between abrasive grains so reducing cutting efficiency while increasing friction Use of lubricant/coolant/metalworking fluid: Can carry away swarf (preventing loading), transport heat (which may affect the physical properties of the workpiece or the abrasive), decrease friction (with the substrate or matrix), suspend worn work material and abrasives allowing for a finer finish, conduct stress to the workpiece.

Abrasive minerals
Abrasives may be classified as either natural or synthetic. When discussing sharpening stones, natural stones have long been considered superior but advances in material technology are seeing this distinction become less distinct. Many synthetic abrasives are effectively identical to a natural mineral, differing only in that the synthetic mineral has been manufactured rather than been mined. Impurities in the natural mineral may make it less effective.

Some naturally occurring abrasives are:

Calcite (calcium carbonate) Emery (impure corundum) Diamond dust (synthetic diamonds are used extensively) Novaculite Pumice dust Rouge Sand

Some abrasive minerals (such as zirconia alumina) occur naturally but are sufficiently rare or sufficiently more difficult/costly to obtain such that a synthetic stone is used industrially. These and other artificial abrasives include:

Borazon (cubic boron nitride or CBN) Ceramic Ceramic aluminium oxide Ceramic iron oxide Corundum (alumina or aluminium oxide) Dry ice Glass powder Steel abrasive Silicon carbide (carborundum) Zirconia alumina

Manufactured abrasives
Abrasives are shaped for various purposes. Natural abrasives are often sold as dressed stones, usually in the from of a rectangular block. Both natural and synthetic abrasives are commonly available in a wide variety of shapes, often coming as bonded or coated abrasives, including blocks, belts, discs, wheels, sheets, rods and loose grains.

Bonded abrasives

Assorted grinding wheels as examples of bonded abrasives.

A grinding wheel with a reservoir to hold water as a lubricant and coolant. A bonded abrasive is composed of an abrasive material contained within a matrix, although very fine aluminium oxide abrasive may comprise sintered material. This matrix is called a binder and is often a clay, a resin, a glass or a rubber. This mixture of binder and abrasive is typically shaped into blocks, sticks, or wheels. The most usual abrasive used is aluminium oxide. Also common are silicon carbide, tungsten carbide and garnet. Artificial sharpening stones are often a bonded abrasive and are readily available as a two sided block, each side being a different grade of grit. Grinding wheels are cylinders that are rotated at high speed. While once worked with a foot pedal or hand crank, the introduction of electric motors has made it necessary to construct the wheel to withstand greater radial stress to prevent the wheel flying apart as it spins. Similar issues arise with cutting wheels which are often structurally reinforced with impregnated fibres. High relative speed between abrasive and workpiece often makes necessary the use of a lubricant of some kind. Traditionally they were called coolants as they were used to prevent frictional heat build up which could damage the workpiece (such as ruining the temper of a blade). Some research suggests that the heat transport property of a lubricant is less important when dealing with metals as the metal will quickly conduct heat from the work surface. More important are their effects upon lessening tensile stresses while increasing some compressive stresses and reducing "thermal and mechanical stresses during chip formation".[2] Various shapes are also used as heads on rotary tools used in precision work, such as scale modelling. Bonded abrasives need to be trued and dressed after they are used. Dressing is cleaning the waste material (swarf and loose abrasive) from the surface and exposing fresh grit. Depending upon the abrasive and how it was used, dressing may involve the abrasive being simply placed under running water and brushed with a stiff brush for a soft stone or the abrasive being ground against another abrasive, such as aluminium oxide used to dress a grinding wheel.

Truing is restoring the abrasive to its original surface shape. Wheels and stones tend to wear unevenly, leaving the cutting surface no longer flat (said to be "dished out" if it is meant to be a flat stone) or no longer the same diameter across the cutting face. This will lead to uneven abrasion and other difficulties.

Coated abrasives

A German sandpaper showing its backing and FEPA grit size. Main article: Coated abrasive A coated abrasive comprises an abrasive fixed to a backing material such as paper, cloth, rubber, resin, polyester or even metal, many of which are flexible. Sandpaper is a very common coated abrasive. Coated abrasives are commonly the same minerals as are used for bonded abrasives. A bonding agent (often some sort of adhesive or resin) is applied to the backing to provide a flat surface to which the grit is then subsequently adhered. A woven backing may also use a filler agent (again, often a resin) to provide additional resilience. Coated abrasives may be shaped for use in rotary and orbital sanders, for wrapping around sanding blocks, as handpads, as closed loops for use on belt grinders, as striking surfaces on matchboxes, on diamond plates and diamond steels. Diamond tools, though for cutting, are often abrasive in nature.

Other abrasives and their uses

Here the abrasiveness of toothpaste is detailed by its Relative Dentin Abrasivity (RDA)