What Is a Grinding Wheel Dressing Stone?
A grinding wheel dressing stone is a tool shaped into a stick for facilitating the grinding process on various tools’ cutting edges. Made of materials like alkanthus and alumina, these oil-based, smooth stones are primarily used for deburring products where scratches would compromise quality.
They are employed for precision finishing (honing) of the inner diameters of parts in automobiles and machinery, available in different grades of roughness to suit various grinding wheel applications.
Uses of Grinding Wheel Dressing Stones
Grinding wheel dressing stones are used in various applications requiring precision and uniform finishing. These include parts like bearings and cylinders in engines of vehicles like ships, airplanes, trains, and automobiles, as well as in resistors, hydraulic cylinders, and hydraulic pumps in trains and general equipment. High-quality dressing stones are crucial as they enhance part durability and reduce wear.
They are also available in consumer-friendly forms like sticks or handhelds at 100-yen stores for DIY projects.
Principle of Grinding Wheel Dressing Stones
These stones are made from hard materials such as diamond and cubic boron nitride, suitable for polishing super ceramics, iron, steel, and glass. Available in various shapes like shell-shaped or cylindrical sticks, they are tailored to specific applications. Special-purpose grinding wheel dressing stones are used in high-precision applications, such as polishing parts for new bullet trains and special vehicles.
The effectiveness of a dressing stone is often measured by its Knoop hardness degree, indicating its suitability for polishing harder materials. The polished surfaces often have a distinctive hatch pattern, enhancing lubrication and reducing wear on parts. While some dressing stones are made from softer natural ores with oil, ultra-low abrasive stones have recently become more prevalent, offering high durability and cost efficiency.