Precision, Stability and Productivity Increase in Throughfeed Centerless Grinding

Centerless grinding is a high precision manufacturing process commonly applied to the mass production of many industrial components. However, workpiece roundness is critically affected by geometric lobing and no practical tool has been developed to solve the problem in throughfeed working mode. Based on simulation methods previously applied to plunge grinding, a new software tool has been developed in this work. The software determines the optimal working configuration and can be used to reduce set-up time and improve three important features: 1) Precision, as the roundness error is rapidly corrected at the optimal configuration. 2) Productivity, since the workpiece stock can be significantly reduced. 3) Stability, because the process is less sensitive to the original roundness error of the workpiece.