A brief overview of a Grinding process:
Surface grinding is generally the most common of the grinding techniques. An abrasive wheel rotates on a spindle and runs generally above the piece of material, be it metallic or non-metallic. This produces the desired surface finish along with the ability to grind to extremely high tolerance’s. Typically + /-0 .0001” or + / - 0 .002 mm. The work piece is held on a chuck, normally of a magnetic kind, another version is to use a vacuum chuck for the non-magnetic components.
The grinding wheel needed, will depend on the kind of component being ground, there are many different compounds available for the varied materials to be ground. Once you have chosen the correct wheel, you can either grind with a flat wheel producing a flat surface or you could put a form on the outside of the wheel to produce a particular shape, this would be a mirror image of the shape on the wheel.
Cylindrical grinding is another type of grinding. This allows you to grind the outside and internal diameters. The main difference between the two methods is that on Cylindrical grinding both the work piece held either in a chuck or between centres and the abrasive wheel will rotate. The same level of tolerance’s are achievable as with the surface finish.
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