Improving the performance of profile grinding wheels with helical grooves

Abstract

Helically grooved grinding wheels have been shown to improve the performance of flat grinding processes by reducing the forces and spindle power during grinding. However, to date, helical grooves have never been applied to a profile grinding process. In this paper, we demonstrate experimentally that helical grooves are highly beneficial to profile, creep feed grinding processes—in some cases, allowing depths of cut up to 300% larger than a conventional profile grinding wheel. In addition, we extend the existing grooved grinding wheel theory to profile grinding wheels and, for the first time, describe a generalized method for calculating the groove factor for any grooved/textured profile grinding wheel. The experimental results of this paper suggest that it may be possible to optimize groove geometry for a given profile, as nearly identical groove geometries showed different results for two different grinding wheel profiles.