Diamond, having many advanced properties such as superb thermal conductivity, high mechanical hardness, and high chemical inertness, is one of the most important materials used in the mechanical, telecommunication and optoelectronic industry. However, high hardness value and extreme brittleness have made diamond a very difficult material to be machined to the specified form accuracy and surface roughness. In the present study, the laser cutting and mechanical polishing experiments were conducted on PCD and synthetic diamond. An Nd:YAG laser of 1064nm wavelength and a cast iron wheel (scaife) were used to carry out the cutting and polishing processes respectively. Efforts have been made to correlate machining parameters to the surface morphology and material removal rate of the obtained surfaces. The underlying material removal mechanisms, microstructure of the machined surface and machining induced defects were also investigated.