A single stone dresser has been believed to finish a grinding wheel into a perfect circle equivalent to the rotational runout of the grinding wheel shaft, but 3D calculation indicated that the grinding wheel becomes elliptical based on the of V groove marks of a reciprocating dressing carved on the grinding wheel surface. The roundness error reaches around 5 μm. This value is several times larger than the depth of cut at finish grinding and the vibration displacement at idle of the grinding wheel shaft. The abrasive chatter marks usually found in grinding may be due to transcription of the oval profile of the grinding wheel caused by dressing. In addition, in the grinding test, it was shown that pitch of grinding waviness and transcription pitch of the surface profile of the grinding wheel matched well, confirming the validity of the hypothesis. Furthermore, we proposed a method of multiple helical dressing effective in preventing grinding chatter marks.

A grinding wheel with an internal three-dimensional structure (flow path) was manufactured using a composite grinding wheel manufacturing system combined with a 3D printer and droplet discharge technology (PELID). Grinding experiments were conducted using the fabricated grinding wheel and the results showed that it realized good surface roughness compared to those without the internal structure. It was also confirmed that the developed system can be used to freely design the inner and outer shapes of the grinding wheel.