What does slicing with wire saws mean?
Your know-how
When slicing with wire saws, also known as wafering, a wire is winded over two or more wire guide rollers, resulting in a wire web. This wire web is used to slice the entire workpiece into individual parts (e.g. wafers) in a single pass. The workpiece passes through the wire web, which moves back and forth. This process allows extremely thin and uniform wafers to be sliced with efficient use of material. The process can be performed using both diamond wire and a slurry process.
Slurry-Process
An abrasive mixture consists of glycol or oil with unbound cutting grit such as silicon carbide or diamonds, whereby the material is removed in a lapping process.
The grit particles roll between wire and material, therefore the particle speed is max ½ of the wire speed.
Slurry technology generally has:
- lower risk of damage on the cutting surface.
- less wire deflection in inhomogeneous material.
- smoother surface as it is slower than the diamond wire process.
Diamond wire process
Slicing with diamond wire is a grinding process, whereby the wire is coated with tiny diamonds which removes the material.
The speed of the grit particle is equal to the wire speed, which theoretically is doubling the removal rate at same wire speed compared to the slurry process.
Diamond wire technology generally has:
- lower cost per wafer for most applications
- significantly higher wire speed
- higher removal rate
- less environmental impact due to water-based cutting fluids
- cleaner process
- better TTV
- less heat generation and better heat dissipation
