Content area
Full Text
Clamping has often proven to be the Achilles heel of hard machining. This held true for tool manufacturer Becker Diamantwerkzeuge GmbH (Landsberg, Germany) until the company started using the TOPlus clamping system from Hainbuch America Corp. (Milwaukee; Marbach, Germany).
Although the founding date of Becker is officially 1987, the firm's origin can be traced to the first half of the last century when its primary activity was manufacturing diamond drawing dies. After the advent of polycrystalline diamond (PCD) and later cubic boron nitride (CBN), the company was considered to be one of the pioneers in the area of ultra-hard cutting materials. At that time, metal cutting applications were fairly scarce, so the market was primarily the jewelry industry.
In the mid 1970s, Werner Becker left the family business and moved to Bavaria to start his own company. Although he initially concentrated on natural- diamond cutting tips, he recognized other possibilities associated with the use of ultra-hard cutting materials.
"For more than 35 years, we have been involved with the development, production, and sales of precision metal-cutting tools made from materials such as natural diamond, synthetic diamond, and cubic boron nitride," Becker says. "Several years ago, these...