ABSTRACT: In the last years wire sawing processes have been invented for a lot of applications in the field of natural stone and construction materials especially at very thick materials or diffcult to access components. In the late 80's, few companies begun metal cutting with diamond wire cutting systems with moderate success. The diamond wire cutting wag limited to small carbon steel shapes, such as pipelines for transporting gas or oil under sea especially the task of cutting pure steel components offers new fields of applications for i.e. retreatment of nuclear power or offshore components. The application of the wire sawing process for these, specific cutting operations require the development of adapted diamond tools to the cutting process. In this paper basic principles of wire sawing are explained and the background of diamond wire cutting of steel components are discussed. The interaction between the tool and the workpiece will be described in detail. For this reason all necessary data (i e. forces, temperatures and tool wear)have been measured and analyzed in various sets. The methods of diamond tool wear-analysis will be additionally presented in this paper. Based on the collected data of tests a modal of the failure mechanisms has been generated. The represented results of the project made for further developments of the diamond wire sawing technique emphasizing the applications for steel components are described.

KEYWORDS: diamond wire saw cutting metal component