DETERMINATION OF THE OPTIMUM FEED RATE IN THE SURFACE GRINDING OF TITANIUM ALLOY WITH cBN GRINDING WHEEL

Abstract

Ti-6Al-4V (Ti64) alloy is the most popular Titanium alloy used in the industry.
However, it is described as a difficult-to-process material because of its poor
tribological performance, which leads to a higher friction coefficient, severe
adhesion, and significantly low thermal dissipation. In griding process, cubic boron
nitride (cBN) grinding wheels are an industrially attractive and long-term stable
tool selection for hard-to-machine metallic alloys, due to their high productivity,
high cutting reliability, and low thermal damage. This research evaluates the
machining characteristics of Ti64 through surface grinding experiments using a
resinoid cBN grinding wheel with a grit size of #120. The effect of technology
parameters including tangential feeding and depth of cut (DOC) to the surface
roughness is presented. The results show that surface roughness is significantly
affected by grinding parameters. The increase of feedrate or depth of cut both
introduce higher surface roughness. The effect of DOC is more apparent than those
of tangential feeding. The experimental results show that optimum feedrate of
3000mm/min would produce the minimum surface roughness.