Dry Grinding by Means of Additively Manufactured Toric Grinding Pins

Abstract The dry grinding process is challenging due to the induced thermal loads into the workpiece, which leads to a reduction of the workpiece quality. One approach to reduce the thermal loads is to adjust the grinding tool geometry by inserting a porous structure for dry grinding. This porous structure can be implemented, for example, by additively manufactured grinding tools. For this purpose, the suitability of additively manufactured vitrified cubic boron nitride grinding tools for dry grinding of tempered AISI M3:2 was investigated and compared with conventionally manufactured grinding tools to investigate the possibility of reducing the high temperatures and to verify the advantage of additively manufactured grinding tools. For this the resulting topographies and residuals stress states as well as wear of the grinding tools were analyzed. Additively manufactured grinding tools generated constant surface roughnesses of below 1 µm as well as contant compressive residual stress states. These results were attributed to a continuous self-sharpening of the grinding tools, which was shown qualitatively and quantitatively on the basis of the tool surfaces. Additively manufactured grinding tools with a porous structure thus have the potential to increase the possibilities of dry grinding.