Precision internal grinding with a metal-bonded diamond grinding wheel

A metal-bonded grinding wheel, compared with conventional grinding wheels, offers the advantage of high hardness, high holding ability and finer usable abrasive grit mesh sizes. The truing and dressing of a metal-bonded diamond (MBD) wheel, in practice, are very difficult. To grind small-diameter internal cylindrical surface with MBD-wheels, an interval electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) method was utilized. Experiments were carried out on an ordinary cylindrical grinding machine with an attached internal grinding set-up, and straight type grinding wheels of different grit sizes were used. The grinding wheels were trued, using the electrical discharge method, and the effects of electrode shapes, grinding parameters, and grit sizes were evaluated experimentally. Mirror surface grinding of different materials was carried out with a #4000 CIB-D wheel, incorporated with this interval ELID (ELID II) method. The experimental results are reported.