Honing Stones with Boron Nitride and Diamond

In contrary to conventional honing tools, cBN or diamond honing stones must be adapted to the form of the workpiece prior to use. For the honing of holes, for ex­ample, the tools are ground to the dimensions of the hole in a pre-tensioned state on an external grinding machine with silicon carbide or precious corundum grind­ing wheels. After this profiling process, the honing tools have no cutting effi­ciency, so that a downstream sharpening process is required. For this purpose, moist, loose silicon grains are dispersed between the workpiece and the tool dur­ing the honing process. The resulting lapping process sets back the bond to the grains, which facilitates the tool’s cutting ability. Another possibility is to use moist, soft corundum stones [KLIN77]. Both procedures have in common that the selected grain size of both the loose silicon grains and the corundum stone is smaller than the grains of the cBN or diamond honing stone to be sharpened, so that only the bond is removed.

7.1 Influences on the Process and the Work Result