An Investigation of Surface Grinding Characteristics for Titanium Alloy with CBN Wheel

Abstract

This study performs an experiment to investigate the effect of process variables such as rotational cutting speeds of the wheel, feed rate of the work-table and grinding depth of cut on surface roughness and the fluctuations of grinding forces for Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy. STP-1623 ADC surface grinding machine, grinding wheel with CBN material sintering and Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy workpiece are used in the experiment. The roughness of the grinding surface was measured by the roughness measuring instruments and the fluctuations of grinding forces were measured through dynamometer after each surface layer ground from the workpiece in the experiment. The grinding performance can be ascertained from the signal fluctuations phenomena of the grinding forces both along normal and tangential directions, which may also be utilized as an index for the quality of surface finish judgment. The results show that excellent surface quality being always consistent with the stable grinding force fluctuations and can be obtained under the conditions of slow feed rate of the work-table, high revolutions of the wheel and shallow depth of cut.