An experimental study on the creep feed grinding of narrow deep grooves of stainless steel

Abstract

Experiments were carried out machining SUS321 stainless steel workpieces using a single-layer electroplated cubic boron nitride (CBN) wheel; a WinTec MV-45 machining center and creep feed grinding following orthogonal test method were used. Narrow deep grooves were machined. The surface roughness Ra values of the groove side walls were collected and analyzed. The influence of grinding parameters (including wheel speed, feed rate, and cutting depth) on the surface roughness of the grooves was studied. The result showed that the feed rate has the most significant influence on the surface roughness Ra values of the narrow deep groove, the influence of the wheel speed on the surface roughness Ra values is the second, and the effect of the cutting depth on the surface roughness Ra values is the least. The optimum parameters were achieved by orthogonal experiment optimum design and taking vw = 1.5 mm/min, ap = 5 mm, n = 7000 rpm for grinding SUS321 stainless steel. A model predicting the surface roughness Ra values of the machined grooves was established by processing the collected data by partial least square regression. The predictions made by the model match well with the experimental data, and thus, the model can be used to predict the surface quality/roughness in future grinding.