Natural diamond tools are mainly used for copper and copper alloys and precious nonferrous metals such as gold, silver and rhodium, as well as ultra precision mirror processing of special parts, such as camera disk, optical plane mirror, multi face mirror and two surface mirror. But its crystallization is anisotropic, and the cutting tool is expensive. The performance of PCD depends on the content of diamond grains and cobalt, and the tool life is 10~500 times of that of carbide WC substrate. It is mainly used for turning non-metallic materials, such as aluminum, copper, magnesium and its alloys, hard alloys and very strong wear resistance fiber plasticizing materials, metal matrix composites, wood and other materials. The cutting speed, feed rate and cutting depth are dependent on the material and hardness of the workpiece.

The properties and applications of synthetic polycrystalline diamond composite sheet (PDC) are close to PCD cutting tools. They are mainly used in the cutting and processing of non-ferrous metal, hard alloy, ceramics, non-metallic materials (plastics, hard rubber, carbon stick, wood, cement products, etc.) and composite materials, and gradually replace hard metal cutting tools. Because there are some residual metal and graphite between the diamond particles, the bonding metal is distributed in a coalescence or vein distribution, which will reduce the wear resistance and life of the tool.

In addition, the residual metal of solvent metal exists directly, and the solvent metal contacts directly with diamond surface.  Reduce the (PDC) oxidation resistance and cutter heat resistance, so the cutting performance of the tool is not stable.  Diamond thick film cutting tools are complex in preparation process, because diamond has very high interfacial energy with low melting point metals and their alloys. Diamond is difficult to be infiltrated by ordinary low melting point solder alloys. The weldability is very poor, and it is difficult to manufacture complex geometric tools. Therefore, TDF welding tools can not be applied to high speed milling. Diamond coated tools can be used for high speed machining because, in addition to the excellent mechanical properties of diamond coated tools, the diamond coating process can be used to produce arbitrary complex shape milling cutters for high speed machining such as aluminum titanium alloy aeronautical materials and refractory nonmetallic materials, such as graphite electrodes.