ABRASIVE COMPACTS

Abrasive compacts, in particular ultrahard polycrystalline abrasive compacts, are made under high pressure/high temperature conditions and are characterized in that they include a coarser grained fraction of ultrahard particles distributed non-percolatively throughout a finer grained fraction of ultrahard particles, which may be regarded as a finer grained ultrahard particle matrix, in such a way that the individual coarser grains are largely isolated from one another. It therefore performs as a matrix of highly wear resistant finer grained material interspersed with larger grains, offering a structure that has advantageous wear and impact performance over the behaviours of the two components individually or otherwise combined.