Form-truing error compensation of diamond grinding wheel in CNC envelope grinding of free-form surface

Abstract

In computer numerical control (CNC) grinding of free-form surface, an ideal arc profile of trued diamond grinding wheel is generally employed to plan 3D tool paths, whereas its form-truing errors greatly influence the ground form accuracy. A form-truing error compensation approach is proposed by using an approached wheel arc profile to replace the previously designed ideal one. The objective is to directly compensate the trued wheel arc-profile errors. It may avoid the time consumption of traditional approach that compensates the measured coordinate point errors of workpiece to an iterative grinding operation. First, the 3D tool path surface was constructed to plan the 3D tool paths. Second, the CNC arc truing of grinding wheel was conducted to analyze the form-truing error distribution relative to the applied wheel arc profile. Then, the form-truing error compensation was carried out in CNC envelope grinding. Finally, the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm was used to match the measured coordinate points of workpiece to ideal free-form surface. It is shown that the 3D tool path surface constructed is practicable to plan arbitrary 3D tool paths for the form-truing error compensation. The ICP matching may be used to investigate 3D ground form error distribution. It is confirmed that the form-truing error compensation can directly improve the 3D ground form accuracy. It may decrease the 3D ground form error by about 20% when the 2D form-truing error is reduced by about 58% using the same truing conditions for CNC grinding.