General Electric Company

Robert L Winegardner

Paul D Gigl

A process improvement is disclosed for making compacts containing diamond which reduces crystal flaws within the diamond. This is accomplished by isolating the single diamond crystals in an compressible matrix before exposing the sample to sintering conditions. One method for doing this (described with reference to FIG. 1) is embedding the diamond 14 in a mixture 16 of graphite and diamond fines. This mixture is disposed between two graphite discs 18 and 19 and two cobalt discs 22 and 23. This sub-assembly is contained within zirconium cup 10 on top of which is placed zirconium disc 12 and exposed to high pressure-high temperature sintering conditions.

Growing community of inventors

Grapevine, TX, United States of America

Robert L Winegardner