Experimental Study on Vibration-Assisted Grinding

This paper presents experimental studies of vibration-assisted grinding with small-amplitude vibration (in the order of 1 μm) in terms of ground surface finish and tool life. The objectives are to obtain finer surface finishes on molds and longer tool life. The investigation shows that vibration-assisted grinding can improve surface finishes when compared with conventional grinding. Two different vibration frequencies are conducted in the experiments. Results show that surface finish and tool life are influenced by different process parameters. In vibration-assisted grinding, the best surface finish is obtained by using higher frequency of 11.4 kHz and lower feed rates. In this study, vibration-assisted grinding can extend tool life more than twice as that in conventional grinding. It is also shown that tool life in vibration-assisted grinding can be significantly improved by using minimum quantity lubrication (MQL).