Diamond dressing of vitrified grinding wheels

The purpose of this project is to collect several dressing data into a unifying theory of aggressiveness and to assess the sharpness of the wheels conditioned with different dressing configurations. The preparation of grinding tools is the most important enabling factor in the grinding process. Dressing is the process of conditioning the wheel surface to achieve a certain grinding behavior. A high-performing dressing method refers to form-roll plunge dressing, where the diamond roll is plunged into a grinding wheel with no traverse motion. The most important parameters for plunge dressing processes are: radial infeed, speed ratio, and mode (uni- or anti-directional). The project involves doing experiments using a Blohm industrial grinding and dressing machine, a diamond plunge-roll dresser from Master Abrasives, an aluminum oxide grinding wheel and different flat workpiece to make measurements and analyze the effect of plunge-roll dressing on grinding wheels performance. A state of art on definition of Aggressiveness number in finishing processes and studies on utility of acoustic emission signal monitoring during dressing, by Badger et al. is reported. Moreover, scanning electron microscope analysis has been carried out to assess the wheel topography afterwards dressing, underlighting differences between dull and sharp dressing operation.