Development of a new high-shear and low-pressure grinding wheel and its grinding characteristics for Inconel718 alloy

Nickel-based alloy has been widely used due to its outstanding mechanical properties. However, Nickel-based alloy is a typical difficult-to-machine material, which is a great constrain for its application in the manufacturing field. To improve the surface quality of the ground workpiece, a new high-shear and low-pressure grinding wheel, with high ratio of tangential grinding force to normal grinding force, was fabricated for the grinding of selective laser melting (SLM) manufactured Inconel718 alloy. The principle of high-shear and low-pressure grinding process was introduced in detail, which was quite different from the conventional grinding process. The fabrication process of the new grinding wheel was illustrated. A serial of experiments with different processing parameters were carried out to investigate the grinding performance of the developed grinding wheel via analyzing surface roughness and surface morphology of the ground workpiece. The optimal processing parameters of high-shear and low-pressure grinding were obtained. The surface roughness of ground workpiece was reduced to 0.232 μm from the initial value of 0.490 μm under the optimal grinding conditions. It was found that the initial scratches on the ground workpiece were almost completely removed after the observations with the metalloscopy and the field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The capability of the newly developed high-shear and low-pressure grinding wheel was validated.