Bond
In grinding wheels, Bond refers to material used to hold abrasive grains in place giving shape to the grinding wheel, abrasive stick, hone, or similar products. Bonding materials can be resins, metal, and vitrified materials etc. Bonds are critical component of grinding wheels that helps to distinguish one manufacturer from another. For coated abrasives bond refers to the resin used to attach abrasive grains to the backing material.

Grade
Grade is meant to mark part of the standard grinding wheel indicating the relative hardness of the wheel bond structure. Manufacturers indicate wheel grade with letters ranging from "A" for very soft to "Z" for very hard. Since grade depends upon properties of bond materials, hardness values for one manufacturer may not correspond directly with similar values from another manufacturer.

Coolant
A traditional name for metalworking fluids used in grinding. Once thought as primarily a means to cool a workpiece to prevent burn, research showed that fluids have other functions such as lubrication, which may be equally or more important than cooling. Hence the preference for the use the terms metalworking fluids to refer to fluids used in grinding processes.

Polishing
Polishing refers to the process using very fine abrasive minerals for little or no material removal where visual appearance is the primary purpose. Typically, polishing is an art using special compounds and abrasive products, recent advancements in very fine grained coated abrasives can produce some polished surface.

Grinding
Grinding refer to the machining with removing material from a workpiece by using abrasive minerals in a wheel, stone, belt, paste, sheet, compound, or other abrasive product.

Fine grinding
Fine grinding is machine tools and a grinding process for precision grinding of flat and parallel surfaces. A relatively recent development, fined grinding grew out of lapping technology and free abrasive machining with the replacement of loose abrasive and lapping compounds with a bonded grinding wheel. The grinding wheels may be wheel composed of small pellets of bonded superabrasive grains.

Finishing
Finishing is a measurement of surface characteristics of a workpiece. Historically finishing is a visual characteristic, recently finish has become also a functional property of the surface. In common practices finish is a measure of the average roughness Ra as determined with a surface profilometer. Contemporary metrology includes a large number other parameters that are statistically derived to describe peaks, valleys, lay, bearing area, etc. of the surface profile.

Lapping
Lapping refers to a material removal process using loose abrasives and a fluid where parts are processed between two large flat lap plates to achieve very flat surfaces and extreme fine finishes. In contrast to grinding and honing, lapping is minimal material removal, forces are very light and parts move freely between lap plates. Finishes are measured in micron and nanometer ranges. The term is also commonly used for processes that produce very fine finishes using loose abrasive grains. Historically lapping means a process for the ultimate refinement of geometry or surface finishes using very fine abrasives to produce extremely accurate components. The process is being replaced by fine grinding.

Truing
Truing is a process to correct the concentricity and shape of a grinding wheel. As distinguished from dressing, which removes bond material to expose fresh abrasive grains, truing is designed to reduce vibration and produce a uniform cutting rate for the grinding wheel.

Dressing
As distinct from truing, dressing is a process to remove bond materials and worn abrasive grains and expose fresh abrasive using a variety of tools. Though some coated abrasives have sufficient abrasive and bond to allow for dressing, dressing is primarily used with bonded abrasives. Diamond tools or a bonded abrasive stone of aluminum oxide or silicon carbide are the most common devices used for dressing grinding wheels. Dressing is important for maintaining control finishes, thermal damage and dimensional accuracy of workpieces.