New Technology in Metalworking Fluids and Grinding Wheels Achieves 130-Fold Improvement in Grinding Performance

Metal manufacturing industries have a growing interest in finding economical ways to improve grinding productivity, part quality, and production cost. Our study extensively investigated the effects of the types of grinding wheels, grinding fluids, and their different combinations on grinding ratio (G-ratio), specific energy (U), grinding efficiency (E), and surface roughness (Ra) of 52100 steel ground parts for a wide range of specific material removal rates. As a result of this study the following findings were made: The specific material removal rate (Q’) can be increased by more than 100 percent by using sol-gel wheels with metalworking fluids containing a high concentration of extreme pressure (EP) lubricants, instead of conventional aluminum oxide wheels with non-EP-containing fluids. The sol-gel grinding wheel generates an eight to ten times higher G-ratio than a traditional aluminum oxide wheel. Metalworking fluids with two levels of EP lubricants were compared with a fluid that did not contain EP lubricants. The fluid with the highest EP level gives six to nine times higher G-ratios than the non-EP containing fluid. The combination of the sol-gel wheel with the highest-EP-level fluid results in a 56-fold increase in G-ratio over that of the conventional aluminum oxid