Grinding Aluminum What Type of Finish Expect

[majohnson]

It CGW 60I wheel, it what I could find and only buy 1 piece. Most of the others I would of needed to buy 10 pieces. DOC is .001” with a .02” stepover. It was roughly a second and a-half to cross feed the face. The diamond is sharp. I had taken 2 roughly .0005 passes along with 2 spark out passes. I had to get some mill work done yesterday, so I did not have a chance to do anything else.

 

[eKretz]

I'd get that stepover up way higher on aluminum. Drop the depth of cut to .0003" or in that ballpark. Stay away from a heavy cut when finishing aluminum. Make your light finish grind directly after dressing the wheel. Keep doing the popsicle stick rub to remove any stray grit particles.

 

[majohnson]

Redress the wheel did the popsicle stick to knock off any loose grit. I have the coolant mixed at 5-1 ratio. Using the 60grit SIC wheel, doing 5 times across the wheel at .0015” like an article I found said to do. I figured out some of the irregularities in the finish were caused by the piece of heater hose the previous owner had slipped over the cord for the magnet. The finish has improved some but I still get these marks that look almost like the wheel has stripped a small piece of material in spots it does it with other wheels all so, I am just not sure what is needed to correct the spots. I even bought an 80 grit wheel and it was worse. It directly on the magnet, held by the flexure plates with the flexure in the middle

 

[michiganbuck]

Sometimes a grind direction only full-width of wheel pass of a .0005 to .0015 down amount with a fresh dress and wood-sticked wheel, with a slippery coolant like soapy water. and slower long feed.

Sometimes the small incremental cross-feeding will load up the lead of a wheel and cause that small loaded-up area to mark aluminum much because aluminum is not stout enough to break down the wheel and so lower the leading wheel edge..

but it seems every aluminum job is different and often a bugger.