Improvement of the Form Accuracy of a Slender Workpiece in Cylindrical Traverse Grinding

During the cylindrical traverse grinding of a slender workpiece, the ground workpiece is easily bent by the normal grinding force owing to its low stiffness. Therefore, it is difficult to finish the slender workpiece with high accuracy. To prevent the elastic deformation of a workpiece during the grinding process, a steady rest is generally used. However, considerable skill of the worker is required to use a steady rest. Therefore, we developed a new traverse grinding method without any steady rest. In this method, the elastic deformation of a workpiece was kept constant by controlling the traverse speed of the workpiece. At the middle of the ground workpiece, where the elastic deformation increased easily, the traverse speed was slowed down. However, this method had a longer grinding cycle time because the average traverse speed decreased compared to that of the conventional method. To shorten the cycle time, the peripheral speed of the grinding wheel was increased to decrease the normal grinding force. Basic grinding experiments were carried out under several grinding conditions by changing the peripheral speed of the wheel. From these grinding experiments, it was confirmed that the normal grinding force and the form error of the ground workpiece decreased as the peripheral wheel speed increased. By using results obtained from basic experiments, grinding experiments involving changes in the traverse speed were carried out at two peripheral wheel speeds. The grinding cycle time was reduced successfully by increasing the peripheral wheel speed without an increment in the form error of the ground workpiece. Furthermore, a form error was observed at the end of the workpiece where the grinding wheel traveled away from the workpiece. The form error occurred because the normal grinding force decreased rapidly when the contact length between the workpiece and the wheel was decreased at the end of the workpiece. To prevent rapid changes in the normal grinding force, the traverse speed of the workpiece was increased at the end of the workpiece. By using this method, a ground workpiece with high form accuracy was obtained.