Sandvik engineers create world's first 3D printed industrial diamond

Synthetic diamond, which is 58 times harder than anything else in nature, is a key component in a range of machining, drilling and machining tools.

But whilst it’s been possible to produce the industrial diamonds since the 1950s, it has been impossible to form anything other than a few simple geometric shapes from the super hard material.

The new process, which enables  diamonds to be produced in highly complex shapes, could potentially revolutionise the way industry uses the material.

Unlike natural or existing synthetic diamonds, the material produced using Sandvik’s process is a composite.  Most of the material is diamond, but to make it printable and dense it needs to be cemented in a very hard matrix material, keeping the most important physical properties of pure diamond.

Mikael Schuisky, head of R&D and Operations at Sandvik Additive Manufacturing explained that the process prints a slurry consisting of diamond powder and polymer using stereolithography, where complex parts are produced, layer by layer, using ultraviolet light.