Ductile grinding of tungsten carbide molds applying standard CNC machines

Ductile grinding offers several advantages over conventional approaches with grinding and polishing. Ductile grinding is usually carried out on Ultra-Precision-Machines (UPM), e.g. for the production of press molds. However, the machining volumes for ductile processes are limited and UPM are usually not suitable for high volume removal by brittle machining. Therefore, the pre-machining often takes place on conventional CNC grinding machines. In this paper, we publish first results on ductile machining of tungsten carbide dies on a standard CNC grinding machine. This approach enables the pre-machining and finishing of tungsten carbide dies in one machine, in one clamping with the same tool.