Control of Relative Position between Wheel and Workpiece in Surface Grinding

In conventional surface grinding, the size and form errors greater than several μm are unavoidable, because of the stick-slip motion at the slide of wheel-heads, the elastic and thermal deformations of machine tools, workpieces and chucks, the fluctuation of lubricant film thickness on table slideways, the variation of the wheel and table speeds, the wear of grinding wheels and so forth.The paper describes some experiments with a surface grinding machine equipped with a special attachment, which is composed of a cantilever, a weight and a hydraulic servo mechanism and causes the machine tool structures to deform slightly in response to a command and corrects the errors due to the above-mentioned sources. The machining errors have decreased to 0.3 μm in the size decrease error from a reference surface and to 1 μm/60 mm in the longitudinal form error by using the attachment.