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ABRASIVES & GRINDING
Grinding is used in nearly all aspects of engineering. Several means of removing metal by grinding is employed depending on accuracy required and amount of metal removal required. Common uses for abrasives include grinding, polishing, buffing, honing, cutting, drilling, sharpening, linishing and sanding. For simplicity, "mineral" in this article will be used loosely to refer to both minerals and mineral-like substances (whether man-made or not.). Files act by abrasion but are not classed as abrasives as they are a shaped bar of metal. However, diamond files are a form of coated abrasive (as they are metal rods coated with diamond powder).
A bonded abrasive is composed of an abrasive material contained within a matrix, although very fine aluminum oxide abrasive may comprise sintered material. This matrix is called a binder and is often a clay, a resin, a glass or a rubber. This mixture of binder and abrasive is typically shaped into blocks, sticks, or wheels.
The most usual abrasive used is aluminium oxide (grey wheel or white toolroom wheel). Also common are silicon carbide (green wheel) for grinding tungsten carbide.
Bonded abrasives need to be trued and dressed after they are used. Dressing is cleaning the waste material (swarf and loose abrasive) from the surface and exposing fresh grit, usually preferred is a diamond dressing stick. Trueing is restoring the abrasive to its original surface shape. Wheels and stones tend to wear unevenly, leaving the cutting surface no longer flat (said to be "dished out" if it is meant to be a flat stone) or no longer the same diameter across the cutting face. This will lead to uneven abrasion and other difficulties.
Miller’s Tooling stocks ½ ct diamond dressers and star wheel dressers for trueing grinding wheels. Also abrasive dressing sticks for bench 
grinders are avail.
A coated abrasive comprises an abrasive fixed to a backing material such as paper, cloth, rubber, resin, polyester or even metal, many of which are flexible. Sandpaper is a very common coated abrasive. Coated abrasives are commonly the same minerals as are used for bonded abrasives. A bonding agent (often some sort of adhesive or resin) is applied to the backing to provide a flat surface to which the grit is then subsequently adhered. A woven backing may also use a filler agent (again, often a resin) to provide additional resilience. Coated abrasives are mainly applied to linishing belts & sanding discs, sheets.
BENCH & PEDESTAL GRINDING WHEELS
Most common are 6” & 8” grinding wheels in grey aluminum oxide grinding wheels.
Also green (silicon carbide) wheels are used to touch up carbide tools. Most workshops use fine & coarse wheels, or combination of; 1 x grey, 1 x green grind wheel. Grinding wheels are in Coarse, Medium or Fine grits. Either way Miller’s Tooling’s staff can assist
you here.
TOOLROOM & SURFACE GRINDING WHEELS
An extensive range of white grind wheels (for heat sensitive steels), pink grind wheels (light finishing) & ruby grind wheels (tough, heavy stock removal) grinding wheels are available.
Grinding wheels can be dressed or formed with a diamond dresser or grinding wheel former to form a particular profile required. Once again a huge selection
of grit is avail,
From 60grit grind wheels to 240grit grind wheels for finishing. In addition to these bonded grind wheels, diamond & CBN grinding wheels are easily available for tool & cutter grinders in cup, flared & recessed, straight grind wheels.
CUT OFF & DEPRESSED CENTRE GRINDING WHEELS
Cut off wheels & depressed centre grind wheels are used in the portable tool industry, commonly referred to as reinforced abraisives, mainly for angle grinders etc. Huge selection of grade & types and diameters are all avail here at Miller’s Tooling Pty Ltd.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE "NORTON" CATALOGUE
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE "FLEXOVIT" CATALOGUE
Miller’s Tooling Pty Ltd is an authorised distributor of;
“NORTON” grinding & abrasive products
“FLEXOVIT” grinding & abrasive products
“CARBORUNDUM” grinding & abrasive products
