The quality of sharpening of cutting tools is directly affected by the grinding wheel, which helps to restore the properties lost during operation. In this case, it is necessary to take into account several characteristics at once, such as granularity of the abrasive material, shape, hardness, and so on. The size is primarily determined by the design of the grinding machine. Experts advise using products with the largest diameter, since the productivity and quality of subsequent work will depend on this in many respects, but there are some exceptions.
To work with tool steels, in most cases, a grinding wheel of white electrocorundum is used, which has intensive self-sharpening of cutting grains. Due to this, a sufficiently high productivity and a good quality of the grinded surfaces are achieved. However, to perform sharpening of cutting tools made of meroceramic or hard alloy, they resort to diamond or silicon carbide.
At present, diamond grinding wheels are the hardest, unlike products made on the basis of other abrasive materials, but they also have their own weakness, expressed in significant fragility. In this regard, they are intended mainly for the final processing of carbide tools, when you need to remove a not very large layer of material. That is, there should not be a strong shock load on the diamond grains.
Such a grinding wheel can be made on a metal, ceramic or organic bond. In the first case, high strength characteristics are provided, and the heat resistance also increases. Thus, the service life is greatly increased and the geometric shape is perfectly maintained. Organic binder products are ideal for finishing. Unlike the aforementioned analogues, they have a greater consumption of abrasive material.
The productivity of sharpening and the cleanliness of the processed surface also depend on the grain size of the abrasive. Depending on this parameter, micropowders, grinding powders and grinding particles are isolated. The tests showed that the grinding wheel with a grain size of 60 to 80 is best manifested in the process of sharpening carbide surfaces. At a relatively low cost, such products make it possible to remove a significant layer of hard alloy, while ensuring sufficient surface cleanliness.
As a rule, marking of grinding wheels is carried out using special labels, which necessarily contain information about the manufacturer, abrasive material, grit, hardness and bond. All listed data are placed on one line in an abbreviated form. As for tools having small sizes, the absence of some parameters is allowed on them. In addition to marking, products can also indicate volumetric weight and structure, batch number and other characteristics.