Ask The Grinding Doc

Articles • December 1, 2013 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Cooling gizmo has issues

At a trade show, a company displayed a grinding wheel with slots, where coolant is poured into the center of the wheel and then ejected into the grinding zone. What's your take on this design?

Articles • August 1, 2013 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Be cautious when changing coolant

A company running a centralized coolant system with neat oil seeks help from the Grinding Doc. The shop's oil supplier is promising great things if the shop switches to a newer oil product. But it seems like such a grand undertaking.

Articles • June 1, 2013 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Dealing with burn in grinding

The Grinding Doc responds to a shop that is cylindrical-plunge grinding a threadlike shape into tungsten carbide, and is getting grinding burn on the leading face, but not the trailing face.

Articles • April 1, 2013 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Choosing the proper CBN grit size

The Grinding Doc tackles a common mistake made by shops using CBN wheels is that they choose a grit size that's too large and then take drastic actions to cope with it.

Articles • February 1, 2013 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Keeping cool grinding stainless

Dear Doc: I grind the ODs and IDs of stainless steel bearings and have a much tougher time than when grinding hardened steel. Why?

Articles • December 1, 2012 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Achieving reasonable wheel wear

Dear Doc: I grind fine threads into hardened stainless steel with a fine-mesh aluminum-oxide wheel. The threads are 0.8mm deep in a 5mm-dia. ID. There are three threads per part. This operation just chews through the wheel, and I get only one part before I have to dress a 0.2mm depth in my 4mm-dia. wheel. What am I doing wrong?

Articles • August 1, 2012 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

The real cause of burn

Ask the Grinding Doc columnist Dr. Jeffrey Badger addresses a shop's question about the real cause of grinding burn.

Articles • June 1, 2012 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Cranking up feed rates

I use resin- and metal-bond diamond wheels and used to manually stick them. Now our machine does it automatically and I don't have the "feel" to determine if the wheel is being stuck hard enough. Is there a way to know how fast I should stick?

Articles • April 1, 2012 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Determining burn depth

Estimating burn depth is tricky. It depends on the thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity of the workpiece material, the maximum surface temperature reached and, most importantly, the time the wheel is in the grinding zone.

Articles • December 1, 2011 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Determining actual wheel costs

Determining actual wheel costs and answers to other grinding questions can be found in this month's Grinding Doc column.

Articles • August 1, 2011 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Testing cutoff wheels

Cutoff wheel manufacturer inquires about a testing program to evaluate his product in the August 2011 Ask the Grinding Doc column in Cutting Tool Engineering.

Articles • June 1, 2011 • Jeffrey A. Badger, Ph.D.

Nonsensical grinding parameters

Dr. Jeffrey Badger, Cutting Tool Engineering magazine's Ask the Grinding Doc columnist, helps you make sense of nonsensical grinding parameters and achieving final depth when ID grinding in his June column.