Process-parameter effects in WC–Co cemented carbide creep-feed grinding

Creep-feed grinding of WC–Co cemented carbide is a crucial roughing process in tool manufacturing, where surface integrity directly influences tool performance. This study combines single-factor and orthogonal experiments to quantify how grinding depth, feed rate, and wheel speed affect residual stress, microhardness, and subsurface cracking, and to develop a multi-output predictive framework. Surface roughness Ra increased from 0.507 to 0.595 μm as grinding depth increased and from 0.525 to 0.671 μm as feed rate increased, whereas it decreased from 0.664 to 0.501 μm with increasing wheel speed. The maximum subsurface crack depth increased from 2.06 to 6.33 μm with increasing grinding depth. ANOVA indicated that feed rate most strongly affected Ra, grinding depth dominated residual stress and subsurface damage, and wheel speed exerted the greatest influence on microhardness. A multi-output Gaussian process regression model achieved an overall test-set prediction accuracy of 94.25%.