Ultra-precision ductile grinding of BK7 using super abrasive diamond wheel

In this paper, a novel conditioning technique using copper bonded diamond grinding wheels of 91 μm grain size and electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) is first developed to precisely and effectively condition a nickel-electroplated monolayer coarse-grained diamond grinding wheel of 151 μm grain size. Under optimised conditioning parameters, the super abrasive diamond wheel was well conditioned in terms of a minimized run-out error and flattened diamond grain surfaces of constant peripheral envelope. The conditioning force was monitored by a force transducer, while the modified wheel surface status was in-situ monitored by a coaxial optical distance measurement system. Finally, the grinding experiment on BK7 was conducted using the well-conditioned wheel with the corresponding surface morphology and subsurface damage measured by atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning electric microscope (SEM), respectively. The experimental result shows that the newly developed conditioning technique is applicable and feasible to ductile grinding optical glass featuring nano scale surface roughness, indicating the potential of super abrasive diamond wheels in ductile machining brittle materials.