A novel sandwich structured wheel to achieve mirror finish in grinding of a mould steel

Abstract

A novel manufacturing tool called sandwich flexible elastic grinding wheel is developed to achieve high material removal rates and machined finish of a mould steel. This tool is made of aluminium matrix, ethylene propylene rubber layer and abrasive layer. Ethylene propylene rubber layer has great elasticity and produces elastic deformation when contacting with the workpiece. With the existence of an abrasive layer, rigidity at small scales allows grinding to occur, which can effectively remove the residual height of the surface and improve the surface quality. In this paper, influences of grinding process parameters of the sandwich elastic grinding wheel on the key characterisation parameters of surface integrity are studied, and the surface roughness and material removal rates under various process parameters are investigated. Then, the process parameters that are suitable for mirror machining are selected by experiments and are demonstrated on an S136 mould steel workpiece. Mirror finish can be achieved by single processing. The surface roughness of the mould steel converges from the original Ra142 nm to Ra7.42 nm, the surface texture is more compact and regular, and the surface integrity is significantly improved.