Laser Dressing of Grinding Wheels

Lasers are presently used in a number of noncontact manufacturing processes such as welding, drilling, cutting, shaping, scribing, etc. The applications of lasers in the machining of hard and brittle (difficult-to-machine) materials such as ceramics are well reported in literature and widely practiced in various industries such as aerospace, automotive, microelectronics, etc. The concept of laser machining can be further extended for novel applications such as dressing of grinding wheels. Dressing of grinding wheels refers to the resharpening operation designed to generate a specific topography on the cutting surface of the grinding wheel. This chapter briefly provides the background of the traditional approaches for dressing of grinding wheels and associated performance and quality issues. This is followed by a detailed explanation of the two major laser-based approaches namely, laserassisted dressing and laser dressing which presents the potential for effective implementation in the manufacturing environment.