Al21,
one of the best way to monitor the grinding wheel wear, gap control an breakage is one system which use Acoustic Emission (AE)as principle. In the market there is a lot of comercial systems, but the price usualy is high. In Brasil there is a company called Sensis Automação (
We are in the grinding business and "sound" means more to us than anything else. I have not needed anything new for several years, but when I do I will be looking at vibration and or acoustic type methods.
Bob 502-452-9851
Sorry for the late reply, I've just joined up today. We at J&S produce grinders so have experience in this.
Most CNC machines have software that compensates for wheel wear, and takes it into acount when dressing. The software also takes account of diamond wear, so that the wheel form can be ajusted when your diamond rad is getting bigger due to wear.
We use Gap elimination systems to sense when the wheel is going to touch the part, so that you can eliminate the "dead, air grinding time" while you are gently feeding in trying to find the part.
You can also use these acoustic systems to touch your diamonds on to wheels, or wheels on to parts, so you don't have to climb in the machine to set up.
We also use a monitoring system on the power that the wheel spindle motor is pulling so you can see if your dress has "gone" or if you can afford to go faster. On our machines this in the form of a real time graph of time v power, so as a production engineer you can see what happens in the process rather that waiting for the cycle to finish and seeing what's left in your machine!. We use this a lot in creepfeed applications. It takes the black art out of grinding if you can see what's going on.
We have used acoustic systems supplied by Marposs and Schmitt.
I hope this is clear, drop me a line for more info.
