A novel 3D printed compliant ball-end grinding tool with crystal structure: Feasibility and performance analysis

Abstract

During grinding complex components with difficult-to-machine materials, compliance grinding tools often experience shortened life and weakened performance due to intense temperature rise. This paper presents a novel solution strategy of preparing crystal-structured compliance tools using multi jet fusion (MJF), and five structures were selected to evaluates its feasibility and grinding performance. The macro and micro elastic deformation of the tools were analyzed by combining finite element and experiment. The results show that the crystal structure provides similar macroscopic stiffness of the tools and introduces microscopic compliance anisotropy. The crystal structure resulted in a reduction of the grit pull-out ratio by more than 82.60 %, while also alleviating the adhesion of flexible substrates adhesion and the prevention of abrasive layer fall-off, leading to prolonged tool life. Furthermore, compliant grinding tools with a crystal structure achieved comparable material removal capacity, lower surface roughness, and higher energy efficiency. In addition, they used only 29.06 % to 36.22 % of the material consumed in manufacturing. Notably, the material removal rate (MMR) of the star-structure tool can reached 94.72 % of the solid-structure tool. The diamond-structure tool exhibited the lowest ground Ra, accompanied by a reduction in grinding temperature of 19.4 °C.