Abstract
GSO is a material which is gradually being employed for the scintillators used in nuclear medical diagnoses such as PET and SPECT. However such characteristics as poor machinability and difficulty in achieving efficient quality machining have impeded the rapid increase in the use of GSO. In this study, the authors thus attempted the mirror surface grinding of GSO by the electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) grinding method, which has been successfully used to obtain efficient and high quality ground surfaces of brittle materials. In the experiments, #400 to #8000 cast bonded diamond wheels were used to investigate the ELID grinding characteristics of GSO. The results of the experiments showed that 1) the ground surface roughness improves as the abrasive diameter becomes smaller, and a high quality grinding surface of 9.0 nmRy can be achieved with the #8000 wheel, 2) SEM observation confirmes that the removal mechanism by the #4000 wheel and above is mainly in the ductile mode, 3) Grinding of GSO by ELID was stable, and good surface could be achieved in the mirror-surface grinding of thin sheets using the #8000 wheel and ELID grinding.
