How to Achieve High-Precision Cutting of Extremely Hard and Brittle Sapphire

Cutting ultra-hard materials like sapphire presents significant challenges rooted in the material's inherent properties: an extremely high hardness (Mohs hardness of 9), extremely low fracture toughness, and strong anisotropy. This makes the machining process highly sensitive to tool performance—any minor blade vibration, uneven distribution of diamond abrasive grains, or insufficient bonding strength of the matrix to the grains can easily trigger stress concentration at the moment of cutting, leading to crack propagation.

Using a Cu-Co based Pre-Alloyed Powder (KIN-01A) as the formulation material, the customer produced a grinding wheel (specification: 52×0.1×20mm) for sapphire substrate cutting. The wheel achieved full-depth deep cutting of 0.15 mm, successfully stabilized the feed rate at 1.2 mm/s, and strictly controlled the edge chipping size to within 15 micrometers (μm), thereby enhancing the product’s mechanical strength and yield rate. More importantly, during the cycle of consistently meeting the above quality standards, the total effective cutting length achieved by this grinding wheel exceeded 1,100 meters.

In the precision machining industry, edge chipping and precision fluctuations pose major challenges to product yield and cost. Sagwell's KIN-01ACu-Co based pre-alloyed powder is precisely designed to address these uncertainties. It reconstructs performance at the material level, maintaining tool stability and service life, and leverages material breakthroughs to improve the yield rate of machined products and optimize production costs.

-