A theoretical wear model for diamond tools in stone cutting

Metal-bonded diamond tools have been introduced to the processing of stone several decades ago. Today this type of process is carried out following tool-makers prescriptions, however tools often declared similar by manufacturers actually exhibit different behaviour and performance. Therefore, the study of a wear model is very important in order to define methods of selection for both tools and machining conditions. Since the tool wear in cutting process is a multidimensional problem of great complexity, the inductive method, based on empirical testing and results interpolation, is the most common in the literature. In this study, in order to attain a key of interpretation of the tool wear process in stone cutting, as well as to attain some criteria to plan sawing tests, a theoretical model of the tool wear is presented, which has been tested using experimental results drawn from the current literature. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.