Dressing of fine grained diamond grinding wheels for ultra precision grinding of structured molds in brittle hard materials

The manufacturing of structured molds calls for alternatives in terms of grinding wheel geometry and dressing. To manufacture geometric features in the micron range on molds, sharp edged fine grained grinding wheels can be used. A dressing procedure with metal alloy blocks is used to create sharp edged grinding wheels. This paper presents results and achieved tip radii of dressed resin bonded and metal bonded grinding wheels. Furthermore, a grinding test on a tungsten carbide mold is carried out to create a diffractive structure and the achieved form accuracy and surface roughness are presented.