Pulsed laser texturing of brazed diamond grinding wheels with orderly arranged abrasive grains and their grinding performance on WC/Co composites

The brazed diamond grinding wheel with orderly arranged grains exhibits excellent performance in efficiently processing hard and brittle difficult-to-machine materials owing to its high exposure height, holding strength, and grinding ratio. However, there are many challenges in achieving high efficiency and precision dressing of brazed diamond grinding wheels and improving the grinding surface quality of hard and brittle materials. In this study, firstly, laser trimming experiments were conducted on a brazed diamond grinding wheel, and an evaluation method for abrasive high equivalence of the grinding wheel was proposed based on the global data acquisition and image processing, the exposure height distribution of abrasive grains of the brazed grinding wheel was analysed comprehensively. Subsequently, pulsed laser texturing experiments were performed on the diamond abrasive grains of the brazed diamond grinding wheel. By optimising the laser scanning trajectory, a low damage and uniformly arranged surface texture was fabricated on the abrasive grains. Finally, grinding experiments was conducted on WC/6Co cemented carbide using the abrasive textured brazed diamond grinding wheel, where the wear characteristics of the abrasive textured brazed diamond grinding wheel were investigated and the influence of different abrasive texture types on the grinding surface quality and grinding force of WC/6Co cemented carbide was compared and analysed. In this study, low-damage textures were fabricated on the surface of large-grain brazed diamond grinding wheels to regulate the material removal mechanism in WC/6Co cemented carbide, providing valuable insights for grinding efficiency and accuracy.