The Fabrication of Porous Metal-Bonded Diamond Coatings Based on Low-Pressure Cold Spraying and Ni-Al Diffusion-Reaction

A porous metal-bonded diamond grinding wheel has an excellent performance in precision grinding. In this research, a novel manufacturing process of porous metal-bonded diamond coating was presented. Firstly, the diamond/Ni/Al coatings (400–600 μm) were fabricated via low-pressure cold spraying and their microstructures were studied. The diamond particles in the feedstock had a core–shell structure. Secondly, the post-spray heat-treatments were set at 400 °C and 500 °C to produce pores in the cold-sprayed coatings via Ni-Al diffusion. The porosities of 400 °C and 500 °C heated coating were 8.8 ± 0.8% and 16.1 ± 0.7%, respectively. Finally, the wear behavior of porous heated coating was tested in contrast with cold-sprayed coating under the same condition via a ball-on-disc tribometer. The wear mechanism was revealed. The porous heated coating had better wear performance including chip space and slight clogging. The surface roughness of wear counterpart ground by the porous heated coating was smaller (Sa: 0.30 ± 0.07 μm) than that ground by cold-sprayed coating (Sa: 0.37 ± 0.09 μm). After ultrasonic clean, the average exposure height of diamond particles in the wear track of porous heated coating was 44.5% higher than that of cold-sprayed coating. The presented manufacturing process can contribute to fabricate high performance grinding wheels via cold spraying and porous structure controlling through Ni-Al diffusion–reaction.