Grinding Wheel Dressers Guide
Introduction of Grinding Wheel Dressers
Grinding wheel dressers, also called grinding dresser or wheel dresser, is a hand tool used to dress, which means slightly trim, the surface of a grinding wheel.
It can help to return the grinder back to its original round shape, expose fresh grains for renewed cutting action, and make a different profile on the edge of the grinder.
Generally speaking, it is a tool for tools, used for maintaining and improving purpose.
Purpose of using Grinding Wheel Dressers
The grinding wheel dressers are designed as a solution to adjust or reform the deformed grinding tools.
Below are the reasons why mechanics introduced this tool into the industry:
● Adjusting the Grinding Wheels
Same as all the tools, grinding wheels would be worn or even out of its shape and thus result in inaccurate products.
When the grinding wheels start to vibrate while working, it might be the situation of balance braking caused by deforming. Under that situation, it would be the time to true the grinding wheels with grinding wheel dressers.
Grinding wheel dressers can help to true the grinders by knocking abrasive particles from the wheel's surface and making the wheel concentric. Thus, it would help to smooth the surface and eliminate the vibration between the grinding wheel and the workpieces to make the quality of the finished machining pieces higher.
● Dislodging Abrasive Particles
Usually, people do that to expose the fresh abrasive from the surface of the wheels.
Since each abrasive grain is a tiny cutting tool, the broken and worn grain would become dulled and lose its effectiveness.
When encountered in this situation, using the grinding wheel dressing tool to expose the fresh grains, which is called a sharpening process, would be necessary for rebuilding the function of the grinding wheels.
● Cleaning Grinding Wheels
After using it again and again, there would be some sharp grains formed by abrasives appearing on the surface of the grinding wheel, especially when the workpiece is softer than the grade for which the wheel is designed.
If the sharp grains get more and more, the shape and features of the grinding wheel would be changed and then lose its original function. Thus, for preventing this damage, it is important to clean grinding wheels often with this grinding wheel dressing tool.
Types of Grinding Wheel Dressers
Grinding wheel dressers can be divided into many kinds. Briefly, they can be grouped into for hand tools and for machine tools.
These three are for handheld grinding tools:
● Star Dressers
Star dresser is a grinding wheel dressing tool with a long handle and a row of free running, hardened and serrated, wavy discs or star-shaped cutters running at right angles to the handle.
When adjusting the grinding wheels with the star dresser, the grinding wheels must be slowed down or stopped. Then, press the dresser on the face of the grinding wheel to knock the abrasive grains out.
● Diamond Dressers
Compared with the star dressers, diamond dressers have a shorter handle. The diamond dressers are grouped in diamond tools that they have diamonds on their surface for more powerful grinding efficiency.
The diamonds are either made into tiny forms and ordered in matrix on the end of the dresser or a single diamond mounted on the surface of the dresser.
Since the hardness of diamonds is harder than most materials in the world, the diamond dressers can easily remove the abrasive grains more efficiently.
● Dressing Sticks
It is a stick made of hard material, usually silicon carbide with a stronger bonding agent.
Below are for machine tools, mainly used on CNC machines. These four types of grinding wheel dressers are used for grinding complex shapes. They can automatically dress the grinding wheel through computer control.
● Stationary Dressers
The stationary dressers are designed as metal blades with a single diamond brazed into the tip, and can be operated with CNC programs.
When applying dressing work with stationary dressers, the operators can use the CNC dressing program to move the dresser across the face of the wheel to create the desired profile.
● Crush Rolls
The crush roll is either a high-speed steel or tungsten carbide wheel. When repairing the grinding tools with crush rolls, the crush rolls would be forced against the grinding wheel and spin at the same surface speed as the grinding wheel.
This can help break the link between abrasive grains and the surface of the grinding wheels and then exposing the new surface as the particles fall away.
However, crush rolls have a disadvantage that the wheel profile cannot be adjusted except by replacing the roll with one having a different profile.
● Diamond Crush Rolls
As the name shows, diamond crush rolls are coated with diamond particles that can wear more slowly and less wear. Thus, achieving tighter tolerances than plain crush rolls do is easy to accomplish for diamond crush rolls.
● Rotary Dressers
A Rotary dresser looks like a pizza-cutter, so sometimes it is called a pizza-cutter dresser. This dresser is designed with a disc with a hard material, usually diamonds, on its edge.
This grinding wheel dressing tool is also controlled by the CNC program.
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