Title: Mirror surface grinding of sapphire by coarse grain size diamond wheels

Authors: Hiroshi Kasuga; Hitoshi Ohmori; Masayoshi Mizutani; Akihiko Nemoto

Addresses: Materials Fabrication Laboratory, RIKEN, 2-1, Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan ' Materials Fabrication Laboratory, RIKEN, 2-1, Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan ' Department of Mechanical Systems and Design, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-04, Aramaki Aza Aoba Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8579, Japan ' Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamagata University, 4-3-16, Jonan, Yonezawa-shi, Yamagata 992-8510, Japan

Abstract: This paper discusses the grinding of sapphire for mirror surfaces by coarse grain size diamond wheels. Sapphire is a hard-to-machine material because it has excellent mechanical properties and indentation hardness. Since it is effective for hard materials to use metal-bonded diamond wheels, the authors had two experiments to investigate mirror surface grinding by coarse grain size diamond wheels. The 1st experiment was investigating appropriate grinding conditions, and the 2nd experiment was investigating protrusion height of abrasive grains. Although the conventional methods could not acquire mirror surface, the results of the experiments show that mirror surface (Ra: 5 nm <) were obtained by the #270 and #325 mesh size wheels. These results indicate the possibility of decreasing grinding processes by coarse grain size diamond wheels.

Keywords: mirror surface grinding; sapphire; coarse grain; diamond wheels; nanomanufacturing; nanotechnology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNM.2014.060801

International Journal of Nanomanufacturing, 2014 Vol.10 No.3, pp.309 - 318

Received: 29 Nov 2012
Accepted: 03 Sep 2013
Published online: 17 May 2014 *

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