Unsteady-State Grinding Technology (I) Theoretical Generalization and Research on Grinding Mechanism

In conventional grinding theory, it is obvious that there must be a very high hardness difference between grains of the grinding wheel and workpieces. The best grinding wheels are those giving the lowest "natural limiting surface roughness" while cutting at appreciable plunge velocities. With the development of new materials and new machining processes, conventional theories of grinding techniques are no longer suitable to explain many phenomena in the course of grinding procedures. In dealing with precision or ultra-precision grinding processes of advanced ceramics, many results of experiments and practical production have shown that grinding with super hard materials wheels is not the only method to machine advanced ceramics. This paper is intended to propose a new grinding theory named as unsteady-state grinding technique evolved from some phenomena that can not be explained by conventional grinding theory. Unsteady-state grinding technique means the technique which can make the surface roughness of the materials, especially hard and brittle, be up to the standard of ultra-precision machining by utilizing common wheels characteristic of inferior self-sharpening and wear-resistance. In the process of machining, the common wheel need to be redressed about 3～5 times and the time between two redressings is about 3～5 minutes. As a validation of the new grinding technology, experimental work was performed to prove the existence of the unsteady state in the process of ultra-precision grinding with common abrasive wheel-pink fused alumina wheel. From the results of the observation of the wheel topography, the whole grinding process in unsteady state was separated into three stages namely cutting by grains peaks, micro-cutting by micro edges of the broken grains and rubbing without material removal, which is different from conventional grinding theory. For the difference of hardness between grinding wheel and workpiece material is not so apparent, some people have doubts about whether the cutting especially micro-cutting actions exist in the process of unsteady state grinding. By utilizing the common abrasive wheel newly redressed to grind the finished surface of silicon nitride glut and comparing the finished surface with the damaged surface in SEM pattern and surface roughness, the existence of cutting and micro- cutting actions in the unsteady state grinding process was confirmed.

In conventional grinding theory, it is obvious that there must be a very high hardness difference between grains of the grinding wheel and workpieces. The best grinding wheels are those giving the lowest "natural limiting surface roughness" while cutting at appreciable plunge velocities. With the development of new materials and new machining processes, conventional theories of grinding techniques are no longer suitable to explain many phenomena in the course of grinding procedures. In dealing with precisio...