Grinding force control in an automatic surface finishing system

An automatic grinding system with grinding force control on a CNC machining center is developed to reduce surface roughness. This system includes an electric hand grinder mounted on a CNC machining center, a force sensor to measure the normal grinding force, and a force control sub-system to adjust the grinding depth. The CNC spindle vertical movement is produced by “external machine zero point shift”. The experiments performed in this study include: (1) Taguchiʹs parametric design to determine an ideal combination of the horizontal feed rate and the desired force value during force control and (2) grinding along an inclined surface. The results show that the force control technique may indeed reduce the average grinding force and grinding force variation.