Safety of stationary grinding machines - impact resistance of work zone enclosures

Guards on machine tools are intended to protect persons from being injured by parts ejected with high kinetic energy from the work zone of the machine. Stationary grinding machines are a typical example. Generally such machines are provided with abrasive product guards closely enveloping the grinding wheel. However, many machining tasks do not allow the use of abrasive product guards. In such cases, the work zone enclosure has to be dimensioned so that, in case of failure, grinding wheel fragments remain inside the machine's working zone. To obtain data for the dimensioning of work zone enclosures on stationary grinding machines, which must be operated without an abrasive product guard, burst tests were conducted with vitrified grinding wheels. The studies show that, contrary to widely held opinion, narrower grinding wheels can be more critical concerning the impact resistance than wider wheels although their fragment energy is smaller.