Monitoring of grinding wheel wear

A new, optical sensor has been developed in order to monitor the cutting capacity of grinding wheels. This sensor is based on the principle of triangulation. For the investigation of the grinding wheel topography even during the grinding process the sensor has been mounted at the opposite side of the working area of an external grinding machine. The output signals of the sensor are processed by a digital data acquisition system controlling the position of the sensor and calculating different parameters to describe the state of wheel wear. These parameters take various aspects of macroscopic and microscopic wheel wear into consideration. Some results which have been obtained using a corundum grinding wheel are presented. These results were achieved during the rotation of the wheel at cutting speed.