Fabrication and performance study of monolayer grinding wheel

Abstract

In recent years grinding has gained much significance as a stock removal process, for shaping and sizing both hard and soft materials in contrast to what had been realized in past as the material finishing operation and a process to be worked on very hard materials. In many grinding applications it has become advantageous to use monolayer wheels having grits strongly bonded on a wheel-hub. The bonding layer usually covers 60%-80% of the grit height for effective anchorage of the grits. The successful applications of such wheels have already been reported on grinding at a high speed to achieve high material removal rate. In this study the author has observed that commercially fabricated cBN electroplated wheels may not be free from defects like overplating or growth of galvanic layer in the form of nodules in the space between the grits. Such feature hinders free cutting action andcaused wheel loading leading to early termination of wheel life. On the other hand, wheel loading problem has been greatly minimized in a newly developed grinding wheel in which electroplating and electroless plating are used as an interlayer to hold the grits at their respective places while coating with Ni-5Al by using Detonation gun technique. Such type of bond permits to keep the level of the bonding material low but sufficient to hold grits during grinding thus increasing the chip accommodation space. The principal objective of the present work was to investigate the performance of this newly developed wheel with particular reference to its capability to ensure free cutting action by resisting wheel loading.