Material removal characteristics of ultra-precision grinding silicon carbide ceramics

Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramic has been widely applied to fabricate functional components relying on their excellent physical, chemical and mechanical properties. Meanwhile, it is always highly concerned to seek suitable manufacturing technology and processes for machining such difficult-to-cut material with high-precision, high-efficiency and low-cost. In the present paper, material removal characteristics of reaction-bonded silicon carbide (RB-SiC) and pressureless sintered silicon carbide (S-SiC) were investigated by ultra-precision grinding experiments. #120, #600, #2000 and #12000 diamond cup wheel were employed for coarse, semi-finished, fine and finish grinding, respectively. The surface topographies, surface morphologies and grinding grooves were measured. The results indicated that there are distinguishing material removal characteristics between RB-SiC and S-SiC, and #2000 diamond wheel can be chosen as the final grinding wheel for most high-performance SiC ceramic products. The present study provides a technological reference to ultra-precision grinding of hard materials.