Control system for grinding apparatus

A grinding apparatus for grinding working tips of hard metal inserts of rock drill bits, the grinding apparatus comprising:

• a grinding machine carried on a support system journaled on a stand, and the grinding machine further comprising means for holding one or more bits to be ground,
• the grinding machine equipped with a spindle assembly having an output drive shaft having a longitudinal axis and means to detachably retain a grinding cup for grinding the working tips of hard metal inserts of rock drill bits,
• the output drive shaft driven by a motor to rotate the grinding cup about its longitudinal axis,
• the support system comprises an arm or lever system to control movement of the grinding machine for alignment of the grinding machine with a hard metal insert to be ground and a feed pressure for said grinding machine during grinding, and
• a programmable control system to monitor, control and adjust at least one operational parameter, wherein the operational parameter comprises feed pressure, grinding cup RPM, grinding time or coolant flow, the programmable control system comprising an RFID reader, and a touch screen display, the RFID reader having a proximity sensor configured to detect an RFID tag on a grinding cup containing specific ID data including a size and profile of the grinding cup and scanning the specific ID data on the RFID tag, the RFID reader configured to transmit the specific ID data to the programmable control system to the control system to control the speed of rotation of the output drive shaft and the feed pressure during grinding, and displaying the size and profile of the grinding cup on the touch screen display.