Surface micro-structuring of coarse-grained diamond wheels by nanosecond pulsed laser for improving grinding performance

Abstract

The conditioned coarse-grained diamond wheels are able to achieve the identical surface roughness, higher form accuracy and larger grinding rate when compared to the traditional fine-grained diamond wheels. However, deeper subsurface damage could be inevitably introduced due to the flat tops of the coarse diamond grains. This work presents a micro-structuring method for coarse-grained diamond wheels by means of nanosecond pulsed laser, which allows the generation of micro grooves arrays on the coarse diamond grains distributed on the whole grinding wheel cylindrical surface. The influence of laser parameters such as focal point shift, laser power, scanning speed and scanning passes on micro-structured surface was investigated, and then the laser machining process was optimized in fabricating uniform and continuous micro-structures. The grinding experiments indicate that, when compared to the non-micro-structured grinding wheels, the subsurface cracks depth of ground optical glass was reduced effectually by using the micro-structured coarse-grained diamond wheels.