The future of manufacturing companies depends largely on their ability to adapt to swiftly changing global conditions. These are exemplified by international competition, rapidly growing intercommunication and the increased significance of environmental issues [KLOC98a, ENGE02]. Precision machining with geometrically undefined cutting edges represents a key production engineering technology with high efficiency, security and machining quality.
DIN norm 8589 subsumes within the group “machining with geometrically undefined cutting edges” the following material removal manufacturing processes: grinding, honing, lapping, free abrasive grinding and abrasive blast cutting. Machining is carried out in these production methods by means of more or less irregularly formed grains composed of hard substances brought into contact with the material.
Of all methods understood as machining with geometrically undefined cutting edges, only grinding, honing and lapping can, strictly speaking, be considered precision machining. Free abrasive grinding and abrasive blast cutting, also treated in this book, represent a special group, as they generally cannot bring about geometrical change in the material.
Machining methods with geometrically undefined cutting edges are precision processes with which a very high surface quality and degree of accuracy can be obtained. Formerly, these procedures were only used in the finishing stage. Today however, such high material removal rates can be reached with high efficiency grinding methods that the machining of larger volumes of material has become economically feasible. For machining narrow, deep slots of hardened component parts for example, grinding can be significantly more efficient with respect to machining performance than methods using defined cutting edges. Such performance enhancement in grinding processes has only become possible by the constant further development of abrasive grain materials, grinding wheels and grinding machines.
The modern era of machining with geometrically undefined cutting edges began around the middle of the 18 th century, when the first grinding wheels were being burned. Several decades later (186l), the American chemist Acheson succeeded in the first synthesis of silicon carbide. This started a development in hard materials that still continues today and has contributed such decisive inventions as diamond and boron nitride synthesis. While the development of tools and machine tools was aided from the early stages by research in physics, chemistry and engineering, the design of machining processes is, even today, often carried out empirically. With growing demands on product quality and increasing automation of manufacturing processes, the machining process itself must also become physi
cally interpretable and, finally, functionally describable in the causal chain: tool — workpiece — machine tool. At the beginning of this causal chain is chip formation at the cutting edges of hard material grains, and it is with this area that this volume begins.