Fabrication of PCD face grinding wheel with positive rake angle by femtosecond laser and its performance evaluation in cemented carbide grinding

Super-hard abrasive grinding is considered to be the main approach to realize precision and ultra-precision machining of difficult-to-machine materials such as cemented carbide, engineering ceramics, titanium alloys and superalloy materials encountered. However, heavy grinding force, high grinding temperature and poor surface integrity are prone to be encountered in conventional negative rake angle grinding of difficult-to-machine materials. In response to these problems, a novel concept of positive rake angle grinding is first proposed and an abrasive grain regularly arranged binder-less polycrystalline diamond face grinding wheel with positive rake angle has been designed and fabricated by femtosecond laser ablation. To evaluate the grinding performance of the face grinding wheel with positive rake angle, grinding experiments of YG8 cemented carbide are conducted and compared with the traditional electroplated diamond grinding tool with equivalent abrasive grain dimension and distribution. The results show that compared with the conventional negative rake angle grinding, the normal and tangential forces in positive rake angle face grinding are reduced by 30.3 % similar to 36.4 % and 21.1 % similar to 29.3 %, respectively, and the ratio of normal to tangential force is reduced by 12.6 % similar to 20.3 %. The surface roughness and average depth of subsurface metamorphic layer are also significantly smaller. The laser fabricated polycrystalline diamond face grinding wheel also has better wear resistance in the grinding of cemented carbide. Therefore, it can be concluded that better ground surface quality is obtained by the novel grinding wheel with positive rake angle. The innovative grinding method can fill the research gap on the grinding mechanism of positive rake angle grinding and further enrich the grinding theory of difficult-to-machine materials.