Fabrication of polycrystalline diamond micro-milling cutter with different grain sizes by picosecond laser

Polycrystalline diamond (PCD) is an excellent material for machining micro-tools due to its high hardness and wear resistance. However, the diameter of micro-milling tools is generally required to be less than 500 μm. When preparing micro-milling tools with a large aspect ratio, the processing load introduced by traditional grinding methods is easy to cause tool fracture. Therefore, a composite structure of carbide tool holder and diamond tool head is proposed in this paper. A technique of picosecond laser machining PCD micro-milling tool was studied, and the overall manufacturing process of tool blank preparation, nanosecond laser roughing and picosecond laser finishing was formed. A two-dimensional ablation mathematical model for tangential machining of PCD with a multi-pulse picosecond laser was established, and experiments verified the reliability of the mathematical model. In addition, the effects of picosecond laser pulse pitch, pulse energy, and track spacing on the surface quality of PCD materials with different particle sizes and cutting edge radius were studied by orthogonal experiments. The results showed that after picosecond laser processing, the surface roughness (Sa) of PCD with a particle size of 2 μm was the best, which can reach 0.33 μm, and the cutting edge radius of PCD micro-milling tool with a particle size of 25 μm was the smallest, which can get 1.67 μm. Using the optimized picosecond laser parameters, the high-sharpness single-edge micro-milling cutters with different particle sizes PCD with a diameter of 100 μm, aspect ratio greater than 3, and a cutting edge radius less than 3 μm were successfully fabricated.