Among the zirconia ceramic processing methods, the mechanical processing method is highly efficient and therefore widely used in industry, especially diamond grinding wheel grinding, grinding and polishing. Most other processing methods of zirconia ceramics are suitable for drilling, cutting or micro-machining. When cutting, diamond grinding wheels are mostly used for grinding and cutting. When drilling, ultrasonic processing, grinding or grinding are performed according to different apertures.
Main issues in zirconia ceramic processing
1. Although there are many methods for processing zirconia ceramics, the processing costs are high, the processing efficiency is low, and the processing accuracy is poor. One of the main reasons for this is that ceramics are very hard. For the green body or calcined body of zirconia ceramics, cutting is mainly used for rough processing, and grinding is used for finishing after sintering.
2. Depending on the conditions of the zirconia ceramics, the sintered body can also be directly ground and processed without processing to achieve the design accuracy. In terms of processing, zirconia ceramics are almost similar to metal parts, but the machining allowance of zirconia ceramics is much larger. When rough machining of unfired or calcined ceramics, insufficient strength or surface processing defects are prone to occur, or the required final processing shape cannot be obtained due to insufficient clamping and other reasons. Since shrinkage cannot be maintained uniformly during sintering, the size must not be too close to the final size during rough machining, so the margin left for finishing is large. For metal processing, the finishing allowance should be as few hundred millimeters as possible, taking into account the black scale caused by thermal deformation and heat treatment. For ceramic processing, the finishing allowance needs to be several millimeters or even tens of millimeters. The processing margin is large, the productivity is reduced, and the production cost is increased.
3. Another problem in the processing of zirconia ceramics is the high cost of processing tools. High-priced sintered diamond and CBN tools are required for cutting processing, and diamond grinding wheels are mainly used for finishing. Therefore, The cost of cutting tools is tens to hundreds of times higher than the cutting tools used for metal cutting. The strength of zirconia ceramics is sensitive to processing conditions, and it is difficult to achieve high-efficiency processing. Therefore, the processing cost of zirconia ceramics is much higher than that of ordinary materials.
