Electroless Plating of Micro Pencil Grinding Tools with 5-10 μm Sized cBN Grits
Micro grinding is a promising process to produce small scale structures in hard and brittle materials. Just like macro grinding processes, a high number of abrasive grits embedded on the grinding tools, are applied. This high number of grits results in low cutting forces on individuall grits and very small chip thicknesses, thus generating surfaces with a high quality. The manufacturing of the tools needed to produce such small structures is very challenging. In this paper, a method for the coating of micro pencil grinding tools (MPGTs) is proposed. MPGTs utilize coated superabrasive grits for micro machining hard and hardened materials. The MPGTs developed in the research presented here consist of a base body made of cemented carbide, abrasive grits made of cBN and a nickel bond. The experimental setup and the coating parameters needed to produce a 50-55 μm MPGT with 5-10 μm cBN grits nominal diameter is outlined. In addition, the tools are validated by machining a 500 μm long groove on a hardened 16MnCr5 workpiece.