Diamond Turning—Improving Your Results
Temperature control boosted cut accuracy of a part by a factor of seven.
It's important to know that errors caused by thermal effects are the number one source of error in precision machining. In the figure below an 80 mm flat was diamond turned in a non-temperature controlled environment over a period of five hours.
Figure 1
The figure above is an interferometric analysis of the flatness of the part. The part profile displayed the effects of ± 1 ºC cycling of the room temperature in the form of 0.327 micrometer p-v waves.
Temperature control eliminated the waves:
Figure 2
Figure 2 displays the result of cutting the same part under identical conditions -- but with ± 0.1 ºC temperature control. The waviness is gone, and the part flatness was improved by a factor of 7 to 0.046 micrometers peak to valley.