Planning and analysis of grinding processes for end mills of cemented tungsten carbide

End mills are widely employed in cutting applications, but there is lack of standard grinding process. Thus the main purpose of this paper is to plan the grinding processes of end mills, including approach and retract sequence of each axis, and grinding parameters, etc. A tool grinding CAM system was applied to set appropriate parameters in order to find out the optimal approach and retract distance, and the sequence. In the experiments, a five-axis CNC tool grinder was utilized to grind a square end mill and a ball nose end mill with two flutes to verify the efficiency for the saving of time. Experimental results show that the efficiency was improved approximately up to 40% by the approach and retract time, and the overall machining time, 10%. Therefore, the results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed processes for the saving of machining time. They also can be applied to grind different shapes of cutting tools.