No abstract

Especially for slicing hard and brittle materials, wire sawing with electroplated diamond wires is widely used since it combines a high surface quality with a minimum kerf loss. Furthermore, it allows a high productivity by machining multiple workpieces simultaneously. During the machining operation, the wire/workpiece interaction and thus the material removal conditions with the resulting workpiece quality are determined by the material properties and the process and tool parameters. However, applied to machining of carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP), the process complexity potentially increases due to the anisotropic material properties, the elastic spring back potential of the material, and the distinct mechanical wear due to the highly abrasive carbon fibres. Therefore, this experimental study analyses different combinations of influencing factors with respect to process forces, workpiece surface temperatures at the wire entrance, and the surface quality in wire sawing unidirectional CFRP material. As main influencing factors, the cutting and feed speeds, the density of diamond grains on the wire, the workpiece thickness, and the fibre orientation of the CFRP material are analysed and discussed. For the tested parameter settings, it is found that while the influence of the grain density is negligible, workpiece thickness, cutting and feed speeds affect the process substantially. In addition, higher process forces and workpiece surface temperatures do not necessarily deteriorate the surface quality.

Diamond wire sawing has obtained 90% of the single-crystal silicon–based photovoltaic market, mainly for its high production efficiency, high wafer quality, and low tool wear. The diamond wire wear is strongly influenced by the temperatures in the grain-workpiece contact zone; and yet, research studies on experimental investigations and modeling are currently lacking. In this direction, a temperature model is developed for the evaluation of the flash temperatures at the grain tip with respect to the grain penetration depth. An experimental single-grain scratch test setup is designed to validate the model that can emulate the long contact lengths as in the wire sawing process, at high speeds. Furthermore, the influence of brittle and ductile material removal modes on cutting zone temperatures is evaluated.

Diamond wire sawing has been developed to reduce the cutting loss when cutting silicon wafers from ingots. The surface of silicon solar cells must be flawless in order to achieve the highest possible efficiency. However, the surface is damaged during sawing. The extent of the damage depends primarily on the material removal mode. Under certain conditions, the generally brittle material can be machined in ductile mode, whereby considerably fewer cracks occur in the surface than with brittle material removal. In the presented paper, a numerical model is developed in order to support the optimisation of the machining process regarding the transition between ductile and brittle material removal. The simulations are performed with an GPU-accelerated in-house developed code using mesh-free methods which easily handle large deformations while classic methods like FEM would require intensive remeshing. The Johnson-Cook flow stress model is implemented and used to evaluate the applicability of a model for ductile material behaviour in the transition zone between ductile and brittle removal mode. The simulation results are compared with results obtained from single grain scratch experiments using a real, non-idealised grain geometry as present in the diamond wire sawing process.