Study on material removal mechanism of electrochemical deep grinding

Deep grinding, such as creep-feed grinding and high efficiency deep grinding, offers the possibility of high process efficiency. However, deep grinding is also suffering from grinding heat and grinding wheel wear, resulting in serious surface damage and precision error. Hybrid machining process is generally regarded as effective way to improve the machining performances. Electrochemical machining (ECM) is an anodic electrochemical dissolution process that can effectively remove materials without limitations in terms of the mechanical properties of the alloys. Therefore, this paper attempts to combine deep grinding with ECM process, which can be named electrochemical deep grinding (ECDG). During ECDG process, mechanical grinding and ECM process are simultaneously applied on the anode workpiece. With the aid of high-speed ECM process, the cut-depth is greatly increased without damaging the workpiece. The feed rate and machining stability are also further improved by scraping the electrolyte product and insoluble components. The removal mechanism of anode material during ECDG process was studied through experiments in detail. Based the detailed analysis of material removal phenomenon, a qualitative model of material removal mechanism of ECDG was established. This research provides valuable insights into the material removal mechanism and the dependence of MRR and surface quality on machining conditions in the hybrid process of ECM and deep grinding.