Tech Talk
What is "Dressing" versus "Truing"?
In order to grind a workpiece with a high degree of accuracy of both size and form, as well as achieve satisfactory surface finish and an economical stock removal rate, the grinding wheel periphery has to be properly conditioned. Conditioning of the wheel periphery is commonly referred to as truing or dressing.
The important distinction between the two follows:
Truing of a grinding wheel is the method of making a profile of the grinding wheel rotate true to the center of rotation of the spindle. This is commonly performed with a truing brake.
A truing brake is a grinding wheel mounted in an arbor within a bearing housing which has a friction brake to limit its speed.
Dressing on the other hand is conditioning the profile or form of the grinding wheel periphery. There are many methods of dressing grinding wheels, all suited to particular requirements of the process.
The conditioning of the grinding wheel periphery is of paramount importance. No matter how well a machine tool may have been built with respect to accuracy, rigidity, power or CNC control etc., if the grinding wheel is dressed improperly then the process will not perform satisfactorily.
