Pedestal grinder maintenance - Wheel dressing and truing
 
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Any time a grinding wheel is mounted on a machine it must be trued and dressed to produce satisfactory work. These two terms are sometimes lumped together as “conditioning" but they mean different things. Inexpensive conventional abrasive wheels are relatively robust: dressing and truing can often be performed at the same time and repeated periodically. The same is not true for CBN and diamond grinding wheels.

These super abrasive grinding wheels represent a considerable investment, which should be repaid in longer life and higher productivity. However, achieving that performance demands close attention be paid to truing and dressing.
 
Why true a grinding wheel?
Wheel truing is defined as act of restoring the cutting face of a grinding wheel by removing the abrasive material from the cutting face and sides of the wheel, so that it will run true with respect to the axis of rotation and produce perfect round or flat work.

It also includes the altering of the cutting face shape to produce special contours. As soon as a fresh wheel is fitted, it becomes necessary to true its face. It also produces concentricity or parallelism of faces. It prepares the wheel to perform a forming operation.
 
Why dressing a grinding wheel?
Although the process of dressing and truing is very similar, the reason is different. Dressing is done when a grinding wheel face becomes deformed due to only grinding on one area of the face of the wheel.

A grinding wheel will also need to be dressed when the cutting face becomes blunt, dulled, loaded due to grinding soft materials.
 
Deformed cutting face Loaded wheel Diamond wheel dresser Huntington Wheel Dressers: Wheel dresser stone