Extraction of diamond grain topography from diamond tool surface using 3D surface measurement coupled with image analysis

Characterization of protruded diamond grains in a diamond tool is essential to explain the variation in its machining performance. This paper proposes a method for extraction of diamond grains and reconstruction of their topography from an electroplated diamond bit, using the topographic data and optical micrographs acquired with a confocal laser microscope. Otsu method, mean shift method and texture based method were selected for segmentation of the optical micrographs and their performance was evaluated. Experiment results show that texture based method can satisfactorily extract protruded diamond grains; its result was used to reconstruct diamond grain topography successfully.