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Super hard metals are the result of modern research and development. The last 100 years witnessed high growth in many fields of science and technology including material technology. The recent developments in science and technology resulted in the use of very hard materials in mechanical, automobile, metal stamping and aviation industries. This in turn resulted in the development of new ultra hard cutting materials to make cutting tool to machine these parts. Apart from carbide cutting tools several other super hard materials like ceramic, polycrystalline diamond (PCD), mono-crystalline diamond (MCD-natural diamond), diamond coatings on cutters, synthetic mono-crystalline diamonds as well as polycrystalline cubic boron nitrite are developed.

Super Hard Materials
Correct use and applications of cutting tools made out of these extreme hard materials will result in major timing saving, higher cutting edge life, high cutting speeds, higher accuracy, superior surface finish and can reduce the cost.
Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD)
Polycrystalline diamonds or PCD plates are produced by high temperature and high pressure method where the diamond coating is directly combined with a carbide support. Polycrystalline diamond is made by sintering of superior quality diamond powder with metallic binder. Depending upon the application polycrystalline diamond materials are available in various grain sizes. For instance the diamonds with rough grain sizes are used for manufacturing cutting tools with very good wear resistance due to its ability to retain cutting edge for a very long period. Incase you need very high surface finish on machined item, and then ultra micro grain sizes are highly preferred.
Medium grain sizes are used for normal all purpose cutting tools since it is a balance between high wear resistance of rough grain size and superior finish of ultra micro grains. This makes the medium grain sized polycrystalline diamond as preferred material for making high quality metal cutting tools.
Natural Diamonds
Mono crystalline diamond or MKD is also known as natural diamond out of pure carbon. These natural diamonds enable the production of geometric defined flutes with absolutely notch free flutes. Natural diamond (MKD) is one of the extreme hard materials which are appropriate for attaining superior surface finishes for mirror bright surfaces, machining of non-ferrous materials, micro machining and machining of titanium without burr.
Synthetic Mono-crystalline Diamond
Further research and development resulted in synthetic mono crystalline diamonds which are available in triangles and rectangle shapes with an edge length of approximately 8mm. The natural diamonds often contains nitrogen and it could have varying hardness and thermal conductivity. But the synthetic mono-crystalline diamonds have uniform structure with same thermal conductivity and less internal stress.
Today synthetic mono-crystalline diamonds are being produced in various shapes and sizes which offers great possiblities of application of this extreme hard material in future. Researches have found lot of improvements in synthetic mono-crystalline tool life, improved surface finish and fixed wear and tear behavior compared to other super hard materials like Polycrystalline diamonds and natural diamond. Read more about ultra hard materials.