Absorbed energy in laser truing of a small vitrified CBN grinding wheel

Abstract

Laser truing and dressing of abrasive grinding wheels has attracted great interest as a novel processing technique to complement conventional processing methods. Laser processes offer significant advantages over mechanical processes as lasers enable non-contact processing, and thus prevent tool wear. An energy balance model of energy absorption is presented that takes into account the space distribution of laser energy absorbed/scattered by the workpiece (circular profile). The models developed were used to predict various parameters, such as incident position, focal offset, and incident power, to compensate selective interaction during laser processing. Moreover, the incident angle for laser processing of small vitrified CBN grinding wheels was optimized. Further theoretical analysis and experiments determined the focal position of the incident beam with respect to the surface of the workpiece. Experiments were carried out using different processing parameters and grinding wheels to evaluate the effects of laser spatial properties on processing quality. The experimental results were shown to be in reasonable agreement with predicted results.