A study on ELID ultra precision grinding of optical glass with acoustic emission

ELID grinding of BK7 glass and Zerodur was investigated using acoustic emission. Experiments showed that the contacting area between the wheel and workpiece in a grinding process was critical to influence wheel loading for a fine grit size resin-bonded cup wheel. ELID can be used for efficient material removal when the wheel/workpiece contacting area is large. Correlations were observed between the dressing intensity on the ELID wheel and the detected AE signals. Aggressive ELID dressing parameters for grinding with finer grit size wheels corresponded to a lower AE level. With an increase in the processing time of an ELID wheel, low and stable AE amplitudes became large with fluctuations due to the deterioration of the grinding wheel. Results indicate that the AE sensing technique has the potential to be adopted as an effective method for monitoring an ultra precision grinding process, identifying the condition of the grinding wheel and investigating the mechanism of ELID grinding.