Unsteady-State Grinding Technology (II) Experimental Studies of Grinding Forces and Force Ratio

As is known to all, grinding force is one of the most important parameters to evaluate the whole process of grinding. Generally, the grinding force is resolved to three component forces, namely, normal grinding force F n, tangential grinding force F t and a component force acting along the direction of longitudinal feed which is usually neglected because of insignificance. The normal grinding force F n has influence upon surface deformation and roughness of workpiece, while the tangential grinding force F t mainly affect power consumption and service life of grinding wheel. In order to study deep into the process of the unsteady state grinding, we set up a measurement system to monitor the change of grinding force during the course of grinding and try to find some difference in the change of grinding force between the steady state grinding and unsteady state grinding. In the test, the normal and tangential grinding forces, F n and F t were measured by using a set of equipments including sensor, amplifier, oscilloscope and computer monitor. From the results, we can conclude that: 1) In the unsteady state grinding process, the values of the grinding forces are much lower than those of the steady state grinding process and the grinding force ratio showed a nonlinear fluctuation. 2) The tendency of the grinding forces in the process of the unsteady state grinding proved the existence of the cutting and micro-cutting actions. 3) Because the grinding force signals of the unsteady state grinding are much weaker than those of the steady state grinding, to obtain accurate value of the grinding forces, wave filtering is needed to be done. The whole process to filter the perturbation wave can be separated into three steps in order, changing the grinding force signals from analog signals into digital signals, FFT (fast Fourier transform) treatment to the digital signals, and IFFT(inversion fast Fourier transform) treatment to the digital signals after spectrum limitation.

Unsteady-state Grinding Technology (III) Studies on the Surface Quality

In conventional grinding theory, the chief removed mode of ceramic coprocessor by diamond tools was brittle removal. In order to perform the plastic removal or ductility processing of engineering ceramics the high degree of accuracy and high rigidity grinner must be using micro grain size diamond grinding wheel to direct the processing of micron below rank depth to prevent form the occurring of the brittle processing zone. This will resulted in the high expense of grinding. The expense of grinding could even reach the 80% of the total manufacture cost of the ceramic part. Ultra-precision grinding for advanced ceramics has been achieved by the unsteady-state grinding technique. In this paper, we mainly deals with observing and analyzing the surface quality of the silicon nitride ground by pink fused alumina wheel in different grinding parameters. To optimize the grinding parameters in the process of the unsteady-state grinding, the experiments of X-ray diffraction, energy spectrum analysis, SEM observation and roughness measurement were performed. The results show that: 1. In the process of unsteady state grinding, high line speed (rotational speed) of the grind wheel can improve the roughness of the silicon nitride apparently. It was also evident that the larger the grain mesh size, the better the surface quality. 2. There exists an optimum combination of grinding conditions such as grinding wheel speed, rotational speed of the workpiece, feed rate between the grinding wheel and the workpiece, grinding times and cutting coolant. The surface quality of the silicon nitride can be up to the standard of mirror finishing. 3. By analyzing the finished surface with X-ray diffraction and energy spectrum, the existence of some new phases including titanium and alumina was proved. 4. By utilizing the unsteady state grinding technique, the surface roughness of Ra ≤ 0.030 μm can be achieved by grinding the silicon nitride with the pink fused alumina wheel in low cost. Based on the unsteady-state grinding technique, this paper put forward a new processing method which by utilizing aluminum oxide grinding wheel to perform burnishing process and impudent the low surface roughness processing of engineering ceramic, the Ra is about 0.01 μm. Furthermore, the working efficiency of this method is high, and the process cost is low, so it is a prospective processing method.

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.