18 Image Processing Based Analysis of Diamond Exposure on the Crown of Impregnated Diamond Bit

In order to acquire the information about diamond exposure on the crown of impregnated diamond bit, digital image processing technology was employed to obtain image of diamond distribution following these steps: surface treatment of bit crown, pretreatment and binarization of crown image, restoration of diamond grains. On the basis of binary image, protruded diamond grains were numbered and the uniformity of diamond distribution in matrix was assessed with coefficient of variation of the density of diamond exposure as index. Results showed that the data of diamond exposure obtained by image processing technology basically agreed with that of microscopic observation, with relative error less than 15%.