Abstract
This study deals with the post-process measurement of the grinding wheel topography by means of a newly improved image processing system. In this system, grinding wheel is driven by the high-power electric servomotor with a built-in rotary encoder so that both grinding operation and consecutive measurement of the individual abrasive grains by the accurate wheel positioning are possible. The contraction/expansion process is useful for the separation of adjacent grains. The dark field microscopy is effective in order to extract monochromatic CBN grains from the lustrous metal bond. This system is applicable to the practical grinding operation with resinoid and metal bonded superabrasive wheels with a good degree of accuracy and efficiency. In grinding normally sintered silicon nitride with the resinoid-bonded diamond wheel at a given grinding condi-tion, this system reveals that cutting-edge ratio decreases rapidly due to the micro-fracture of grain tips at the transient stage just after truing/dressing, and it increases slightly with the promotion of attritious wear under the successive steady state. This phenomena are explained by the fact that abrasive grains are damaged during truing/dressing operation.
