| This thesis focuses on the measurement of grinding wheel surface topology and its relationship to grinding forces. The experimental apparatus consists of a Blohm Planomat 408 CNC grinding machine, imaging system, force recording system, and a surface roughness measuring system. The imaging system uses a 10-bit CCD digital camera, microscope and appropriate illumination to determine wear flat area, uncut chip thickness, inter-grain distance and cutting edge density. The force recording system features a dynamometer with three component force sensors. The power is read directly from the machine spindle. The surface roughness measuring system features a unit which determines the surface roughness by tracing a stylus over the workpiece surface.;The Malkin [1] empirical grinding force model is implemented for grinding 4140 steel with a 38A46 HVBE Norton surface grinding wheel. An experimental procedure to determine the unknown parameters in the model was also developed.;The results from the experiments are analyzed and the variation of grinding forces, power, surface roughness, wear flat area, inter-grain distance, cutting edge density, and uncut chip thickness against the number of grinding passes are studied. The effect of wear flat area on grinding force, power and surface finish was also examined as well as the effect of uncut chip thickness on grinding forces. Theoretical values of uncut chip thickness, cutting edge density and inter-grain distance were compared to the experimentally obtained values. |
