In this study, we investigate laser dressing of metal-bonded diamond blades by means of laser pulses with different pulse durations and wavelengths. Conventional dressing suffers from excessive blade wear whereas laser dressing enables precise removal of the bonding metal to generate the required chip space of protruding diamond grains. The challenge for processing this material composite is finding appropriate level of ablation for the bonding metal without damaging the diamond grains through cracking or graphitization. For worn out blades, the influence of pulse duration and wavelength on laser dressed surface topography and on bonding metal removal is studied. The experiments are performed with 532 nm and 1064 nm laser radiation with pulse durations from 12 ps to 20 ns. The blade surface topography and bonding metal removal of the dressed blades is measured with confocal microscopy, where the protruding diamond grains are identified by SEM examinations.
The dressing results show bonding metal removal for the available laser sources in the studied pulse duration range, with increasing number of protruding diamond grains for shorter pulse durations. The results indicate a significant increase of blade lifetime for laser dressed blades compared to conventional dressing methods.