Development Of A Diamond Grinding Head With Heat Pipe Cooling

In the process of high efficiency machining, most of the energy consumed is turned to heat which accumulates in the grinding area and makes the temperature rise fast. As a result of using cutting fluids commonly, pollution and health problems are considered. A new high efficiency cooling method is being studied in our research group.Heat pipe is a device that can transport thermal energy for long distance with relatively low temperature gradient, without external power supply. It uses the latent heat of vaporization of the working fluid to bring the heat from the evaporator to the condenser, which gives a very high thermal conductivity compared with a simple solid model.This paper mainly addresses the problem of cooling in the high efficiency machining. A new type of diamond grinding head with heat pipe cooling is developed, combined with the high thermal conductivity and its arbitrary structure. The design requirements of heat pipe, such as: working temperature, geometric size, material, working fluid and its filling quantity, thermal resistance and the cooling unit are proposed, based on the heat source in the processing. Then the heat pipe grinding head is made according to the requirements.The feasibility and effect of the heat pipe grinding head are verified by the evaluations of the isothermal performance, startup performance and the thermal conductivity itself. For further verification, a quasi-artificial constantan-titanium alloy thermoelectric couple is used for measuring the grinding temperature. The experimental results indicate that: the heat pipe grinding head has certain influence on reducing the temperature in the cutting area, compared with the ordinary grinding head in the same grinding parameters.