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Innovation Story

ILJIN Diamond R&D Center, Director Lee, Hyun Woo

Harder and harder! Never ending innovation, ILJIN Diamond

ILJIN Diamond R&D Center, Director Lee, Hyun Woo

ILJIN Diamond, the only manufacturer in Korea that uses high temperature and high pressure technology for industrial diamonds and hard metal cemented carbide material! Innovative story told by Director Lee, Hyun Woo

Diamonds are the hardest and high thermal conductivity material on earth. Due to such characteristics, it is used for polishing and processing building stones and metal materials, processing automobile parts and producing machineries. It is also used to produce semiconductor process metal tools and often it is used as clinical surgical equipment.
Industrial diamonds are produced under the extreme manufacturing process. Graphite and catalyst metal mixed cylinder lump gets pressed for an hour under the high temperature of 1500 Celsius with the pressure of 50 tons of weight on an area of 1 cm2. This process ultimately produces small powdery diamonds.
R&D Center Director Lee, Hyun Woo tells the story of industrial diamond manufacturing, one of the five most extreme technologies in Korea, and its innovation.

What is the purpose of investing such large amount of money?

As you know, diamond is the hardest material in the world. It also has excellent heat conductivity. Therefore, it is used in almost all industries such as construction, mining, electronics, automobiles, display, mobile devices, aerospace, wind power, steel, solar power, and LED industry. It is irreplaceable, which means it has high added value.

Why is industrial diamond receiving such attention?

Recently, industries want weight reduction and increase energy efficiently. To meet these goals, CFRP, Ni alloy, CGI, ceramics and other new materials are often being used. However, these materials are ‘difficult-to-cut’ materials and the tools used to make such materials require to be much harder, stronger with durability. Therefore, industrial diamond for tools is getting the spotlight.

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How is industrial diamond changing the world?

When hard, strong and difficult-to-cut materials couldn’t be produced, industries used materials with lower hardness and strength. This caused industrial materials to be heavy with low durability. As ILJIN Diamonds produces tools that can produce difficult-to-cut materials, the industrial materials became smaller, lighter and much more efficient. For example, aircraft manufactures now use CFRP, aluminum alloy, titanium alloy to make aircrafts with bigger fuselage. It can hold more passengers yet its weight became lighter, which increases fuel efficiency. It maximizes airline company’s profit, and at the same time, it offers passengers much comfortable ride in a safer setting.

How did ILJIN Diamond become an innovative corporation?

ILJIN Diamond is the only company in Korea that produces synthetic diamonds, PCD/PCBN, PDC and hard metals by using high-pressure, high-temperature technology. It is the only company that can develop and produce synthetic industrial diamonds as well as the related products.
Such pride and technical know-how are reflected upon new product development and innovation. Also, we place customer value creation in priority. We believe cooperative system with the clients since the beginning of the development leads to creative and innovative product development.
A new trial we’re working on is that we are managing two tasks at the same time.
We’re building partnerships among existing tool material suppliers in order to create customer values. Also, we conduct performance evaluation and analysis to respond to technological transformation due to difficult-to-cut materials and high efficiency.

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