Overview
When designing and purchasing metal materials, you may need "ground rods". You may also know that ground rods are round metal rods that have been processed by the grinding process. However, do you have a good understanding of the grinding process? In this article, we will introduce in detail what grinding is, its principles, and why metal materials should be ground.
What is Grinding?
Grinding is a surface treatment process that uses fine hard particles to grind the metal surface. It can make the metal have a bright surface like polishing. The following figure shows the principle of grinding:
Generally speaking, only rod products use grinding. During grinding, the rod is clamped by a fixture. When the grinding equipment is started, the rod will rotate at high speed and move toward the grinding wheel with abrasive particles. When the rod contacts the grinding wheel, the grinding wheel will grind the high-speed rotating rod. The fine particles collide with the surface of the rod and grind off the fine protrusions on the surface, making the surface of the material smooth.
During grinding, the rod rotates around the axis. In order to ensure the uniformity of grinding, the rod should shake as little as possible during rotation. Therefore, before grinding, the straightness and roundness of the material should be at a high level.
In addition, due to high-speed friction, the rod will generate high heat during grinding. If the temperature is too high, it will affect the performance of the metal itself. Therefore, during grinding, it is necessary to spray coolant on the processed surface to cool the metal.
Advantages of Grinding
On the one hand, the ground rods have very high precision. This is because the rods are ground by rotation. The rotation itself limits the material to a very small range of motion.
On the other hand, because the grinding particles are very fine, they can grind away the tiny bumps on the metal surface. This makes the ground rods have a very precise surface roughness. Depending on the grinding particles, the rods can obtain different surface roughness.
Therefore, if you need the rods to have high dimensional accuracy and a very smooth and bright surface, grinding is your best choice.
However, for different requirements of grinding rods, their costs are also different. Therefore, we recommend that you put forward your requirements as detailed as possible when purchasing, so as to save costs as much as possible.
FAQ
What is the difference between grinding and polishing?
Polished and ground surfaces are very similar. The difference is that ground surfaces are finer than most polished surfaces. Also, the polishing process itself is not aimed at controlling dimensions. Instead, the main purpose of grinding is to get more precise dimensions out of the material.
What is the difference between grinding and turning?
Turning is the direct cutting of materials with tools. Both turning and grinding can make materials have high precision. However, turning requires cutting of materials, which means huge waste of materials. For some materials with relatively expensive unit prices, grinding is a more cost-effective choice.
What kind of particles are used for grinding?
Grinding requires particles with higher hardness and finer particles. First of all, in order to ensure that the metal surface can be ground, abrasive particles with higher hardness than the metal itself should be used. At the same time, abrasive particles of different coarseness and fineness also need to be selected to adapt to different surface roughness. If the hardness of the particles is much higher than the material, it may affect the uniformity of grinding. Therefore, when selecting abrasive particles, we need to consider both the hardness and coarseness of the particles.
Further Reading
Conclusion
Grinding is a surface treatment process that uses fine particles to grind the metal surface. The ground metal material has very high dimensional accuracy and very fine surface roughness. Before grinding, you should carefully select the appropriate grinding particles and ensure the straightness of the metal material.
We have precision grinding equipment that can meet your various needs for nickel alloy / superalloy grinding rods. If you are interested in this, please contact us.