A Novel Method for Determination of Grinding Wheel Loading

Wheel surface condition plays an important role in the grinding operation. Wheel loading which is chip accumulation in the space between grains leads to the deterioration of wheel cutting ability and causes excessive force and temperature. Identification of wheel loading is an important issue for optimizing the dressing intervals but it can be a time consuming and an expensive process. A novel technique based on digital image processing to determine the loading areas over the surface of CBN vitrified grinding wheels using the toolbox of MATLAB is presented in this paper. The optical characteristics of the metal chips, the abrasive grains and wheel bond are considered. Edge detection by means of Sobel method is applied to distinguish the wear flat area and chip metal loading debris. Morphological operations including dilation and erosion procedure are applied to process the image and calculate the ratios of the loading areas over the wheel surface. Experiments were performed to examine the repeatability of the proposed technique. The results were verified by the use of a scanning electron microscope.