Ultraprecision cutting of steels with geometrically defined single crystal diamond tools is handicapped by excessive tool wear. This paper presents a new approach to suppress the wear of single crystal diamond tool in cutting of steels. In general, it is said that the wear of diamond tool is caused by chemically reactive wear under high temperature and high pressure conditions. In order to suppress such chemical reactions, the time of contact between the diamond tool and the steel work in cutting was controlled by employing the intermittent cutting method such as fly-cutting. Series of intermittent cutting experiments have been carried out to control the tool-work contact time by changing one cycle of cutting length and cutting speed. The experimental results were shown that the tool wear was much dependent on the contact time regardless of the cutting speed, and that the wear was much suppressed by reducing the tool-work contact time. It is expected that the steels can be successfully cut with a single crystal diamond tool by controlling the contact time.
