Defined generally, free abrasive grinding is a cutting process in which free abrasive parts — so called chips — remove material from the workpiece surface. It is not an improvement in form and dimension which is in the foreground in this case, but rather the elimination of surface faults and the establishment of certain surface properties. Areas of application in which free abrasive grinding is found include deburring, edge-rounding, cleaning, brightening, smoothing, shining, polishing, descaling or derusting of single, mass and serial parts.
The workpieces to be processed are located together with the abrasive material and a fluid, chemical agent (compound) in a working container. The desired removal takes place by means of an undefined relative motion between the abrasive material and the workpieces. This motion is induced by rotation or vibration, but also by moving the workpieces in a stationary pouring of abrasive material [THIL92]. The further development of this method has today made possible surface treatments from casting cleansing to the high-gloss polishing of contact lenses.