Dressing of grinding wheels with hard abrasives by high pressure jets with liquid CO2

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Eckart Uhlmann
• Subject Area: Metal-Cutting and Abrasive Manufacturing Engineering
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 510588719

Due to their high hardness and brittleness, the machining of carbide and ceramics is usually carried out by grinding processes with hard abrasive materials. The thermal and mechanical loads during the grinding process leads to a high grinding wheel wear. The wear-related changes in the grinding wheel shape and topography influences the grinding process and thus the work result in terms of shape, dimension and surface quality. A dressing process of the grinding wheels is therefore necessary for a reliable and stable grinding process. The dressing of grinding wheels with hard abrasive materials places high demands on the dressing tools and is very time-consuming and cost intensive. According to the state of the art, mechanical dressing tools, such as silicon carbide dressing rolls, are mainly used, because of their low cost and wide range of applications. However, these are subject to high wear when dressing grinding wheels with hard abrasives and are only suitable to a limited extent for defined and repeatable dressing. Due to their wear behaviour, conventional dressers and dressing methods have deficits in terms of efficiency. In this context the main goal of this research project is to investigate the dressing process of grinding wheels by high pressure jetting with liquid carbon dioxide (HDCO2) as an alternative method. For this propose, the suitability of the HDCO2 process for profiling, sharpening and cleaning of grinding wheels with hard abrasives is scientifically investigated and a dressing process to replace the conventional process is to be developed. Current researches on HDCO2 underline that the abrasiveness of the jet can be adjusted by varying the parameters. The adaptation of the abrasiveness enables the use of the HDCO2 process for different requirements that are made by the different process steps during the dressing. The novel process thus has the potential to improve the efficiency of dressing processes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants