Experimental investigation of grinding force in microgrinding of ceramic materials using small grinding tool

An experimental study of grinding force in microgrinding zirconia ceramics using small grinding tool is presented. In the experiments, the grinding tool used is electroplated diamond microgrinding wheels of 0.41, 0.63 and 0.76 ìm in diameter, and the machining operations were conducted in side grinding under dry cutting. The process parameters include the diameter of the microgrinding wheel, feedrate, and rotational speed of the grinding spindle. The microgrinding forces were measured by a Kistler three-component dynamometer. The experimental results show that the normal forces are much larger than the tangential forces, the effects of process parameters selected on the variation of experimental results is almost the same for tangential forces, and that is the feedrate, diameter of the microgrinding wheel and rotational speed of the grinding spindle in turn for normal forces. As the feedrate increases or diameter of the wheel increases, the microgrinding forces increase, and the magnitudes of increase are more significant at higher radial grinding depth.