Research on the fabrication and grinding performance of 3-dimensional controllable abrasive arrangement wheels

As the spatial position of abrasive particles in the grinding wheel has a major impact on the uniform abrasion of the grinding wheel and the grinding quality of the workpiece, the design and fabrication of 3-dimensional (3D) controllable abrasive arrangement wheels are of great importance. In this paper, the simulation of grinding process with 3D controllable abrasive placement grinding wheel is presented by using MATLAB software. The influence of the abrasive spatial distribution on the uniformity of the grinding trajectories was theoretically studied. Based on the additive manufacturing technology, a stereolithography apparatus equipment was developed to produce the resin-bonded grinding wheel with 3D controllable abrasive arrangement. Some light-cured resin grinding wheels with different spatial arrangement of abrasive particles were prepared for the verification grinding experiments. The variation coefficient of standard deviation (VCSD) value and the non-uniformity coefficient (NUC) of the ground surface roughness were used to evaluate the uniformity of the grinding trajectories, that is, the machining quality of the workpiece surface. It can be obtained from the simulation results and the experiment results that the abrasive distribution had a significant influence on the uniformity of workpiece surface quality. Comparing with traditional random arrangement abrasives grinding wheel, the grinding experiment results indicated that the 3D controllable abrasive arrangement wheel had a longer effective grinding time and greater total material removal amount. Both the simulation results and experimental results indicated that the uniformity of the grinding trajectories could be optimized with the controllable abrasive arrangement.