Tech Talk
Is Laser Grinding Wheel Dressing On the Horizon?
A technical advance out of the electronics manufacturing industry may one day be applicable to shops whose grinding applications are a little more…well, conventional.
New electronics materials for hard disks and liquid crystal screens are so difficult to machine they require diamond grinding wheels. Even diamond, however, dulls quickly, and the wheels must be sharpened regularly to maintain performance.
Conventional rotary dressing—exposing fresh abrasive grains by rubbing the wheel surface with a diamond hone--requires that the machining process be interrupted. Also, mechanical dressing method is relatively slow and can damage or even remove the diamond abrasive.
Researchers at Nagaoka (Japan) University of Technology School of Mechanical Engineering have developed a laser-based dressing method that sharpens diamond wheels on the fly, removing bonding material more quickly and selectively than previous methods. The higher initial cost of the laser dressing method would be offset by speed; the laser process is about five times faster than mechanical dressing. Costs would be further offset by a faster material removal rate, less wear on the grinding wheel, and the fact that the dressing is done in-process, noted the investigators. Nano-Tem says the engineers have applied for a Japanese patent and plan to test the technique in a manufacturing environment.
