Evaluation of the Working Surface of the Grinding Wheel Using Speckle Image Analysis

The surface quality of the ground components mainly depends on the surface condition of the grinding wheel. The surface condition of the grinding wheel changes with grinding time due to wheel wear and loading. The excessive wear and loading increases the cutting force and the temperature. This in turn affects the quality of the produced component. Hence periodic monitoring of the grinding wheel surface is essential to avoid the production of the defective components. In this paper, an attempt is made to study the changes in the grinding wheel surface condition using the laser scattered images. The simple speckle imaging arrangement is fabricated and fitted into the grinding machine to capture the images of the grinding wheel after each 100 passes. The fresh wheel expected to scatter more light due to higher roughness and porosity. On the other hand, the completely glazed and worn-out wheel scatters the light less due to smoother surface. Thus, speckle image intensity distribution captures the changes in the grinding wheel surface condition. The optical parameters evaluated from the speckle images clearly indicating the changes in the grinding wheel condition. This method can be utilized to evaluate the grinding wheel condition to improve the surface quality of the component produced.