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Dressing diamond wheels

RJT

Titanium
Joined
Aug 24, 2006
Location
greensboro,northcarolina
We have a few plated diamond wheels 3/8 by 7 by 1 1/4 that we leave mounted for surface grinding carbide. We also use the wheels to put clearance in carbide cutting tools (grooving, or putting a corner radius on an end mill). The edges of the wheels have a radius on then that we would like to dress to a sharp corner again. Also have a diamond cup wheel with the same issue. We have used a brake controlled truing devise to true up the wheels , then white sticks to open up the grain. Can we use the same process to take .03 ? off the wheel to get a sharp corner back? Any advise as to how much down feed per pass ? Coolant? Just buy new wheels? Will the manufacturer re dress? Any way to tell how thick the plating is? It looks like 1/8 - 3/16 but that may just be how far up the side of the wheel it's plated.
 
I got to the fifth word in your post and started shaking my head no.
The I go to the end and the 1/8-3/16 made me say yes.

I will go with the assumption that you have bonded wheels not plated wheels.
Plated wheels are silver in color and are one layer deep of diamond chrome plated in place. The can not be dressed.

Infeed per pass on the brake device is from .0005 to ,005. Traverse speed is fast, say 60-150 IPM.
Both of these depend on the dressing stone grit and hardness and the wheel structure.
If you go too fast or too deep it will squeal letting you know it is not happy.

When removing a corner rad you start out aggressive and then back down on infeed towards the end.
Final 10-30 passes should be very light and you may have to keep restarting the stone by hand. In all cases don't let the wheel start the stone spinning.
A very soft stone will take a .010 infeed but this leaves a .010 radius along with a sort of leadin on the corner of your wheel.

On a wheel .030 is a lot to loose. We would hit both sides with a dress.
So on a 1A1 straight wheel we would chuck up in the lathe (on the OD of the mounting adapter) and relive the core back a bit.
Then dress this face, the front of the wheel, say .010/.020 in. This reduces width but leaves the diamond depth in place.
Then we would go after the OD to come into a sharp corner.

On a normal bonded wheel telling depth should be as easy as measuring with calipers.
I would not use coolant, wheel and stone has to match up just right for this to work. Many stones just refuse to work once the get coolant soaked one time.
Because of this "dry" it will be very, very dusty. A shop vac is recommended, You can wear a painters mask but there is going to be fine grit dust left everywhere in the building.

So yes, if you have the diamond depth its not hard to do but if you only bought .062 worth of diamond you don't want to kill half of it in a dress so a both side attack on the rad makes more sense.
Strangely I have outside shops that will bring me a wheel they need a dress/cleanup on since we dress wheels every few hours but admittedly these are places my ex's work at so they tell the boss...there is a easy way.
Bob

(PS: RJT you need more private message room.)
 
Deleted a bunch of old messages, thanks. Here is a picture of the wheels i have. I believe the cup wheel is plated and cant be dressed. These I think are dress able.. Some of the aluminium has already been relieved to use the side of the wheel.
IMG_20190103_140150760.jpg
 
Yes, those are able to be dressed. Those are bonded wheels (dressable), not plated. Plated wheels are not dressable. When they get dull/lose diamonds, they need to be sent out to be stripped and re-plated.
This is an example of a plated wheel:
6x1Vex.jpg
 








 
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