Increased productivity in centerless grinding using inertial active dampers

Regenerative chatter during centerless grinding processes is one of the main factors limiting the productivity. This paper presents a novel chatter suppression technique for centerless grinding using an active damping system based on inertial actuators. Dynamic characterisation of the machine with and without active damping is used first to compute theoretical stability maps. The active nature of the system allows stabilising a wide working range of infeed operations. Finally, experimental results validate the predicted increase of stable grinding area and verify that the technology is very effective for avoiding chatter, ensuring workpiece quality and increasing process productivity.