Precision grinding of optical glass with laser micro-structured coarse-grained diamond wheels

This paper presents a series of micro-structured coarse-grained diamond wheels for optical glass surface grinding aiming to improve the grinding performance, especially subsurface damage. The 150 pm grit size, single layer electroplated diamond grinding wheels with different interval micro-groove arrays were manufactured by nanosecond pulsed laser, successfully. The influence of micro-structures on surface roughness and subsurface damage was investigated. Compared with conventional coarse-grained diamond wheel, the subsurface damage depth was reduced effectually from 5 to 1.5 mu m, although the better surface roughness was not obtained by the micro-structured coarse-grained diamond wheel. In addition, the surface roughness and subsurface damage depth were both reduced with the decreasing interval of micro-groove arrays. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.