It is essential to work with the right and appropriate grinding wheel for an abrasive grinding of metal. But, choosing the right grinding wheel can be a difficult task especially to choose from a variety of options.
There are different types of abrasive grinding wheels available in today’s market. What suits you best depends on the quality of the abrasive grain and application surface.
Grinding wheels have a wide scope in manufacturing industries. These abrasive wheels are usually used in the automobile industry, construction sites, tool shops, medical processing units, & many more.
In a number of industries, Grinding wheels are often used to give precise shapes and structure to a workpiece, they create a high-quality finish on surface materials.
Here in this article, you will find a detailed explanation for the types of grinding wheels and different abrasive grains used in grinding wheels.
Before we proceed, you first need to understand,
what are grinding wheels also why & where abrasive wheels are mostly used?
What is a Grinding Wheel?
In simple words, A grinding wheel is a cutting tool.
It is an abrasive coated cutting tool to cut wood, ceramic tile, stone, steel, aluminum, and concrete.
A grinding wheel is an abrasive disc or wheel with thousands of surface cutting points (abrasive grains) that are kept in place and divided by pores by a bond structure (also known as bonded abrasives).
These pores are empty spaces between abrasive grains and the bond, that assist in the grinding process with the easy removal of waste material and scrap metal parts.
Abrasives Grains For Grinding Wheels
There are four main types of abrasive grains design for grinding wheels, and these are:
Ceramic Aluminium Oxide
Ceramic aluminum oxide grain is stronger and sharper than traditional abrasive grains. This ceramic grain has a special self-sharpening crystallinity structure. Ceramic grains effectively decrease the frequency of coating needed by the grinding wheel and offers a considerably cooler cutting action during the application.
Silicon Carbide
Silicon carbide is a very sharp abrasive grain, comparatively stronger than aluminum oxide. Also, silicon carbide is a flexible material and mostly prefer for grinding soft metals such as aluminum or cast iron, but can also be used on highly hard materials such as carbide.
Zirconia Alumina
Highly advanced resin bonds are linked with the zirconia alumina grain. These grains are mostly used in applications of rough grinding where heavy stock needs fast removal.
Aluminum Oxide
Aluminum oxide is usually suggested for grinding high tensile strength materials including stainless steel and machinery metal. They are also widely used on some less tensile strength metal and alloys such as aluminum and bronze alloys.
What are Different Types of Grinding Wheels?
Grinding wheels are available in a variety of shapes, sizes, and structures. Each abrasive wheel has its own specific function for grinding metal in different ways.
Some wheels provide sharpness and smooth cutting, while others provide luster and shine into a workpiece.
7 Types of Grinding Abrasive Wheels
According to your specific application and material surface choose the right abrasive wheel from the seven different types of grinding wheels.
1. Straight Grinding Wheels
Straight grinding wheels are the basic and easily available abrasive wheel. You can find this simple abrasive wheel anywhere nearby you and in workshops around the world. Most generally, they are used to sharpen tools such as chisels and lawnmower blades.
Straight wheels are commonly used for cylindrical, centreless, and surface grinding projects. Such wheels usually differ in scale, diameter, and face width based on the type of work for which they are used and the size and strength of the grinding machine.
2. Large Diameter Grinding Wheels
Large diameter grinding wheels are like straight spokes, although they are slightly wider and large in size. These large diameter surface wheels, like carbide blanks, grind down the exterior of round objects. It is also used in the oil and thermal spray industry for OD grinding in particular.
Large diameter grinding wheels are available up to 36 inches in size.
3. Grinding Cup Wheel
Grinding cup wheels are most significantly used for polishing stone and concrete. But with the limited grit size, cup wheels can take on complicated jobs like scraping paint and adhesive.
For certain uses, depending on the abrasive scale, cup wheels are also used for re-sharpening and finishing.
4. Grinding Dish Wheel
Dish grinding wheels somehow look like a cup wheel but have a thinner surface edge and wheels are shallow with little depth. Their compact form makes it easy to fit into small ridges where cup wheels not able to reach and perform effectively. Although, Dish wheels and cup wheels have some common applications too.
5. Segmented Grinding Wheel
Segmented wheels are available in different forms. The important part of segmented wheels is that the abrasive parts are divided or segmented and added to the wheel instead of providing a single abrasive rim.
Segmented abrasive wheel quick and easily remove a large amount of waste material without scratching the workpiece surface especially when used with cooling or lubricating substances. Each portion generates a channel that utilizes centrifugal force to move the fluids where they are most required.
6. Cutter Grinding Wheel
The cutter grinding wheel not only cut through the objects efficiently also removes the waste materials very easily. Generally, the width of the cutter grinding edge is very small to eliminate the scrapes.
From cutting tiles, concrete, stones, and sharpening saw teeth, this specific tool is applicable for wide cutting applications.
7. Diamond Grinding Wheels
Diamond wheel edges are bonded with industrial diamonds for that reason they are called diamond wheels. These wheels are widely used for cutting hard materials. They are used to cut materials, that cannot be cut with an alumina or silicon carbide grinding wheel, such as concrete, tiles, glass, PCBs, composites.
