Abstract
The international competition demands a continuous improvement of the process in quality and productivity and at the same time a reduction of costs of the product. An important step to reach this target is to increase the degree of automation. Changing into highly automated and simple-operated production processes, requires a secure process-controlling. With a reproducible use of measuring devices the certainty of a high workpiece quality lasts.
For realising this reliable process controlling, a qualified system for process monitoring which uses adapted sensors and control strategies is necessary. To acquire automatically all the quality parameters relevant for ground parts as exact and fast as possible and non-destructive as well, a so-called flexible measurement cell was developed.
All parameters measured by the flexible measurement cell are used to build up a control system for the grinding process of rotational symmetrical workpieces. For the first time the possibility to control a grinding process by using the subsurface characteristic as a command variable is offered. This system is independent of the grinding wheel specification. Tests have proven the efficiency by the application of CBN as well as corundum.
The demand for a quality control and documentation beside the development of tough processes will be very important to process monitoring. For this reason a prototype system acting with an automatic control has been developed.