Analysis of effecting factors on surface finish of fused silica glass grinding with inclined ball-headed diamond wheel

Fused silica glass is widely used on the manufacture of optical apparatus and resonators due to it's interesting optical and vibration properties. In order to machining the complex structures in the resonators and optical apparatus, grinding process with inclined ball-headed diamond wheel is discussed. Analytical model of the grinding process with inclined ball-headed diamond wheel was built firstly. Afterwards grinding experiments were conducted by varying the feed speed, the rotation speed, the cutting depth and the average grain size of the ball-headed diamond wheel. The machining surfaces were characterized by surface profiler to investigate the effect of the grinding parameters on the surface roughness. The measurement result shows the average grain size of the diamond wheel has important influence on the machining surface and the surface roughness at the groove bottom is better than the groove edge due to the wheel axis tilt angle .