Feed rate optimization and depth of cut control for productivity and part parallelism in grinding

A method is presented for optimizing the horizontal feed rate when using depth of cut manipulation to improve part parallelism in grinding. In vertical spindle surface grinding, achievable single pass tolerances are often limited by the grinding wheel and machine compliance. Previous work consisted of precisely adjusting the depth of cut during grinding to enhance the dimensional tolerance without the need of additional spark-out passes. This work extends the previous work by optimizing the horizontal feed rate for cost functions based on a weighting of processing time and a term related to the dimensional error in the part. In the optimization, a force model predicts the grinding force. Experimental results for six optimization weightings are given which demonstrate the effectiveness of the feed rate optimization as compared to a constant feed rate with the same processing time in the context of the parallelism of the ground part.