Wheel Dressing Tips

Wheel Dressing

The grinding wheel is then lightly touched off on the dressing tool. The distance that the grinding wheel is fed down into the dresser should never exceed 0.001 inches per pass. Ample amount of coolant should be supplied to the dresser to keep the setting from overheating. More than one pass is generally needed to completely clean and sharpen the wheel. If using a single point dresser like the one shown in Figure 2, rotate the diamond periodically to expose a new, sharp, cutting edge.

Figure 2. Single point diamond dresser.

Figure 3. Cluster type diamond dresser.

In dressing the wheel for rough grinding, the depth of the final dressing should be from 0.00025 to 0.0005 inches. The cross feed rate for dressing a wheel that is used for rough grinding is faster than that used for finish grinding. Wheel dressing for rough grinding should be done at a fairly coarse rate.

For Extra Fine Finish—For precision dressing where an extra fine finish is desired, the dresser should be down feed between 0.0001 and 0.0002 inches. After the grinding wheel has been brought to the desired condition, by regular dressing, one to three spark out passes should be made across the wheel face. Spark out passes are made by traversing the dresser across the wheel without additional down feed. The cross feed rate for dressing a wheel that is used for finish grinding is slower than that used for rough grinding. Wheel dressing for finish grinding should be done at a fairly slow rate. This operation will condition the wheel for producing finer micro-inch finishes.