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Grinding Machines

Grinding machines (commonly referred to as grinders) are machine tools used for grinding, a type of machining using an abrasive wheel as a cutting tool to grind unwanted layers of material from a workpiece by a process of abrasion. The machining wheels are made of either silicon carbide or aluminium oxide.

Just as sanding refers to the grinding of a wooden surface, grinding is the general term for machining a metal surface. Because of the high dimensional accuracy in grinding (to the order of 0.000025mm) it is mostly used as a finishing operation for workpieces that need a high surface quality i.e. low surface roughness, or a high accuracy of shape and dimension. As such, grinding usually removes comparatively little metal than other machining processes, however there are also some grinding applications that require removal of a high volume of material (roughing).

Grinding is the most accurate of the basic machining processes.

Because grinding machines work by abrasion a substantial amount of heat is given out, necessitating the need for a coolant to be used to keep the workpiece’s temperature down. This ensures that the workpiece doesn’t go outside its tolerance levels, and also reduces the risk of causing burns to an operator, if it is being controlled manually. An exception would be in the final grinding stages of high precision grinding, where so little material is removed that even without using a coolant any temperature rise is negligible.

There are several different types of grinding machine:

Belt grinder
Suitable for all grinding applications such as finishing, deburring and stock removal

Bench grinder
Often a bench grinder will have two grinding wheels with different abrasion qualities, one for roughing and one for finishing, they are manually operated.

Cylindrical grinder
Used to make precision rods, and like the bench grinding machine the cylindrical grinder may have multiple grinding wheels.

Surface grinder
Surface grinders are available in both CNC and manually operated machines. A machining head is lowered and the workpiece is moved back and forth past the grinding wheel.

Tool and cutter grinder
Used to perform specialist grinding operations such as the drill bit grinder.

Jig grinder
Its primary function is grinding holes and pins, but jig grinders can also be used for complex surface grinding to finish work started on a mill.

Gear grinder
Used in the final stage of producing high precision gears, to remove any tiny imperfections left by other machining processes.

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