International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 39 (1999) 627–638

Study on the grinding of P/M high speed steel ASP60

Pei-Lum Tso*, Chien-Chih Lu
Department of Power Mechanical Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC
Received 19 November 1997; received in revised form 27 April 1998

Abstract
Several studies involved in grinding the P/M high speed steel ASP60 were carried out. The influence
of the grinding mode under different grinding conditions was investigated. The grinding process was
described and identified by using grinding parameters such as dimensionless maximum grain depth of cut
hg, arc of contact lc, equivalent chip thickness heq. The optimum grinding parameters for ASP60 are sug-
gested.  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Grinding; P/M; ASP60; High speed steel

Nomenclature
a depth of cut (mm)
b grinding width (mm)
D diameter of grinding wheel (mm)
Vw table speed (mm/min)
Vs wheel speed (mm/mim)
lc arc of contact (mm)
hg dimensionless maximum grain depth of cut
h maximum grain depth (mm)
u specific grinding energy (GJ/m3)
usl specific slipping energy (GJ/m3)
upl specific plowing energy (GJ/m3)
uch specific chip formation energy (GJ/m3)
Ft tangential grinding force (N)

* Corresponding author.

0890-6955/99/$—see front matter  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 8 9 0 - 6 9 5 5 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 4 9 - 2
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Fn normal grinding force (N)

Ra surface roughness (␮m)
heq equivalent chip thickness (mm)
Z material removal rate with unit width of grinding wheel (mm2/min)

1. Introduction

ASP60 is a super high-alloy high-speed steel powder and metallurgically graded for high cobalt
and vanadium content. It is manufactured by hot isostatic pressing of gas atomised powders. It
can achieve an extremely hot temperature and retain high hardness. Moreover ASP60 shows a
very fine dispersion of carbides and possesses excellent combination of toughness and wear resist-
ance. For these reasons, ASP60 is particularly suitable for cutting and forming tools, due to its
superior mechanical properties and resistance to abrasion.
ASP60 has several excellent material properties, high cutting force, tool wear, and cutting
temperature which are the characteristic features in the machining process. However, its low
grindability has received a rather limited attention by the researchers, hence understanding its
behavior in the grinding process is of vital importance.
The grinding force and the grinding energy have been investigated in several previous studies.
Okamura [1] suggested that the behavior between grains and workpiece could be divided into
three parts: (1) rubbing, (2) plowing, and (3) cutting. Kannappan and Malkin [2] described the
effect of grain size and the operating parameters on the mechanics of grinding. The specific cutting
energy while grinding, which is the total specific grinding energy minus the specific sliding
energy, is independent of grain size and decreases with the increase in the table speed and down
feed. Malkin and Anderson [3,4] calculated the distribution of the total grinding energy among
chip formation, plowing, and sliding energy component, and the portions of each of these energies
which are conducted as heat to the workpiece. On the other hand, Malkin [5] investigated the
selection of operating parameters for surface grinding of steels, when the grinding wheel tool life
is limited by workpiece burn. It is best to use the maximum allowable workpiece velocity with
a corresponding optimum downfeed which is larger for slower table velocities. Malkin and Cook
[6,7] classified the grinding wheel wears as attritious wear, grain fracture and bond fracture. Most
of the wear consists of grain and bond fracture particles with relatively more bond fracture occur-
ring with softer wheels. In general, both the vertical and horizontal grinding force components
increase linearly with the wear flat area.
In this paper, a study was carried out to find the grinding properties of ASP60. A series of
experiments had been set up for the present study. Results have shown that the high strength
ASP60 has a special brittle grinding mode under specific grinding condition, which differs from
other ductile metals.

2. Experimental setup

The apparatus used for the experiment consisted of a horizontal spindle surface grinder, a two
component piezoelectric dynamometer, and a personal computer equipped with an on-board A/D
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Table 1
Physical properties of ASP60 and W1

ASP60 W1

Hardness (HRC) 67–69 60

Density (kg/m3) 7960 7833
Modulus of elasticity (kN/mm2) 250 207
Coefficient of thermal expansionfrom 10.6 × 10−6 9.85 × 10−6
20°C per °C(m/m/°C)
Thermal conductivity (W/m°C) 24 48.3
Specific heat (j/kg°C) 420 504

card. The specimen ASP6O is a powdered metallurgy high speed steel with a hardness of 67–69
Rockwell C, and dimensions of 7 ⫻ 7 ⫻ 20 mm. The grinding wheel employed here is of the
type NORTON 5SG120-JVSG-l, the size of which is 180 mmD ⫻ 6.4 mmT ⫻ 31.75 mmH.
Another specimen W1 tool steel has been used in this experiment for comparison with ASP60.
Table 1 shows the physical properties of ASP60 and W1. Table 2 shows the grinding and dressing
conditions employed in the experiment, in which the grinding wheel was dressed by a single-
point diamond dresser.

3. Grinding properties of ASP60

3.1. Grinding parameters

The primary grinding parameters used for the experiment is shown as follows [8]
Dimensionless maximum grain depth of cut hg:

冪D V
a Vw
hg ⫽ (1)
s

Arc of contact lc (mm):

lc ⫽ √a·D (2)

Table 2
Grinding conditions

Wheel speed 2700–3300 rpm (1526.8–1866.1 m/min)

Table speed 300–5000 mm/min
Depth of cut 2–15 ␮m
Dressing lead 0.2 mm/rev
Dressing depth 10 ␮m
Coolant none
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Equivalent chip thickness heq (mm):

a·Vw Z
heq ⫽ ⫽ (3)
Vs Vs
Eqs. (1) and (3) indicate that hg and heq are directly proportional to the quotient of the table and
wheel speeds and heq is directly proportional to material removal rate with unit width of grinding
wheel Z. Since the grinding process is influenced considerably by the values of hg, lc, and heq, a
knowledge of the influence of the various factors upon these values are practical importance.
They are often recommended as an index for the determination of proper grinding conditions.

3.2. Grinding forces

The grinding force of W1 tool steel and ASP60 measured by a dynamometer is shown and
plotted in Figs. 1 and 2. Under identical grinding condition, it is obvious that the force variation
of ASP60 is greater than that of W1. This shows that ASP60 is more difficult to grind than W1.
In general, the Fn/Ft ratio varies within limits of 1–3 or even more if grinding is carried out using
worn or incorrect type of abrasive grains. As shown in Fig. 3, the force ratio of W1 is nearly a
straight line with a slope of 2, whereas the force ratio of ASP60 shows an irregular variation,
with a steeper slop range from 4–7. It implies that ASP60 may have a different material removing
mechanism from W1, which has a traditional material removing mechanism with ductile grind-
ing mode.
Figs. 4 and 5 illustrates the relationship between tangential force Ft, normal force Fn and the

Fig. 1. Grinding force of ASP60.

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Fig. 2. Grinding force of W1 tool steel.

Fig. 3. Grinding force ratio Fn/Ft of ASP6O and Wi tool steel.

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Fig. 4. Relation among tangential force Ft, dimensionless maximum grain depth hg and arc of contact lc.

Fig. 5. Relation among tangential force Fn, dimensionless maximum grain depth hg and arc of contact lc.
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parameters hg and lc. One easily finds that when the arc of contact lc is small, both the Ft and Fn
perform a “jump” variation with hg. From Eq. (2), the low lc value also indicates a small depth
of cut if the wheel diameter is constant. It is seen that if the depth of cut is small, the grinding
behavior of ASP60 was found to be unstable.

3.3. Specific grinding energy

Specific grinding energy u, the amount of energy which goes into a unit volume of metal
removal, may be calculated from
Ft·Vs
u⫽ (4)
b·Vw·a
where Ft is the tangential grinding force, and b is the wheel width.
Furkawa [9] had found the relationship between specific grinding energy and the dimensionless
maximum grain depth of cut hg as
u ⫽ u0(hg)−⑀ (5)
where u0 is the material constant and with the use of Fig. 6, the constant value of ASP60 will be
u0 ⫽ 2.273 ⫻ 10−3 (6)

Fig. 6. Relation among, specific grinding energy u, dimensionless maximum grain depth hg and arc of contact lc.
634 P.-L. Tso, C.-C. Lu / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 39 (1999) 627–638

⑀ ⫽ 1.015

The specific grinding energy can be separated into three components [6,7]: sliding, plowing,
and chip formation energy. It can be represented as
u ⫽ usl ⫹ upl ⫹ uch (7)

From the energy point of view, the distribution of the three parts of specific energy has a strong
correlation with the material removal mechanism and the grinding behavior. Fig. 7 represents the
relationship between the specific slipping energy usl, specific plowing energy upl and the specific
chip formation energy uch, as well as dimensionless maximum grain depth of cut hg. It indicates
that not all active abrasive grains do cut in reality, if hg is small friction (slipping) and plastic
compression (plowing) would prevail over the chip formation (cutting) process and the value of
specific grinding energy increases. It is obvious from Fig. 7 that the chip formation energy uch
of ASP60 is constant with a value of 105 GJ/m3, and is about seven times more than the Wl’s
15 GJ/m3.

3.4. Surface roughness

The quality of ground surface is created as a result of geometric and kinematic reproduction
of the grinding wheel, accompanied by factors connected with the workpiece. It is generally

Fig. 7. Relation among specific slipping energy usl, specific plowing energy upl and specific chip formation energy
uch, dimensionless maximum grain depth hg.
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accepted that the surface roughness after grinding is strongly related to the so-called equivalent
grinding thickness [10]
Ra ⫽ Rlhreq (8)
where Ra is center line average roughness (␮m), R1, r ⫽ constant which are dependent on the
grinding conditions, and heq ⫽ equivalent chip thickness (mm).
For most of the ductile material, the relationship between surface roughness and equivalent
chip thickness satisfy Eq. (8). This relationship is represented by a straight line on the log scale
where the value of Ra shows an upward tendency with the equivalent chip thickness. In Fig. 8,
W1 satisfies Eq. (8), but ASP60 does not. When the heq is low, the Ra value shows a downward
tendency, after attaining a minimum value, the Ra rises with heq as the W1.
Fig. 9 shows the relationship between surface roughness Ra, dimensionless maximum grain
depth of cut hg and the arc of contact lc. There are two places in Fig. 8 where the value of Ra is
at the minimum:
1. low arc length, where the value of hg is about 2.5 ⫻ 10−5.
2. low dimensionless maximum grain depth of cut, where the value of lc is about 1.3 mm2.
The tendency of surface roughness shown in Fig. 9 is somewhat different from the ductile
materials such as W1 tool steel. This again shows the peculiar grinding properties of ASP60.

4. Ductile mode and brittle mode grinding of ASP60

As discussed above, ASP6O has some peculiar grinding properties, such as grinding force and
surface roughness, which are different from other ductile materials. This particular aspect may
be assumed that SP60 has different grinding mode under the different grinding conditions.

Fig. 8. Relation among surface roughness Ra, dimensionless maximum grain depth hg and arc of contact lc.
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Fig. 9. The comparision of the surface roughness Ra of ASP60 and W1 using equivalent chip thickness heq.

Fig. 10 illustrates a further evidence of the brittle grinding mode of ASP60. The figure shows
the magnification of the grinding surface of ASP6O with light etching. The scratches made by
the grains can be seen clearly that the powder of ASP60 is removed by a “dug out” action. This
can be said as a “transgranular” damage method. When the depth of the cut is smaller than or
close to the diameter of the powder, then the strength of the powder is greater than the grain
boundary as the grain cannot cut it through, and the powder is dug out with a brittle damage mode.

5. Optimum grinding parameter

From the result of Eq. (5) the specific grinding energy may be calculated as follows
u ⫽ 2.273 ⫻ 10−3(hg)−1.015 (9)

Fig. 7 indicates that the boundary of the brittle and ductile mode has a better grinding quality,
where the value of hg is about 2 ⫻ 10−5, where hg is determined by the depth of cut, wheel
diameter, table speed and wheel speed.

6. Conclusion

A model is suggested for choosing the grinding conditions of ASP60, which may probably also
be applied to other P/M high speed steel in general. The values of hg, lc, and heq are valuable
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Fig. 10. The SEM micrography of grinding surface of ASP60.

factors for representing grinding conditions with an adequate selection of kinematic parameters
(a, Vw, Vs). From the results of the present research, the following conclusions can be made
regarding the grinding properties of ASP60.
1. Due to the high hardness of ASP6O, it has a brittle grinding property like ceramics. When it
is ground under low depth of cut, the brittle is the major material removing grinding mode.
2. Under different grinding mode, the variation of grinding force and surface roughness exhibits
a different trend. Grinding mode can be the major influence in the grinding result.
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3. The optimum grinding parameter can be determined by the dimensionless maximum grain
depth of cut hg about equal to 2.5 ⫻ 10−5 according to specific grinding energy u.

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