Method for relief-grinding the cutting teeth of taps, thread formers, and similar tools

Method of forming a relief in relief grinding cutting teeth of a workpiece including a tap drill and/or a thread former, comprising:

• rotating the workpiece in which the teeth are to be relief ground, guiding a rotating grinding wheel in a direction of orientation of the teeth to be relief ground, and effecting a positioning relative movement of the rotating grinding wheel in a direction radially inward with respect to a longitudinal axis of the workpiece;
• superimposing an additional radially inward movement of the grinding wheel to produce the relief;
• and
• controlling the additional inward movement by a rotation body that has a control contour in a circumferential area thereof that determines the contour of the relief;
• wherein a rotating scanning movement of the control contour effects a controlled relative movement of the grinding wheel and the workpiece toward and away from one another to produce a predetermined relief contour on the cutting teeth;
• the rotating scanning movement is an oscillation movement of the rotation body, an oscillation cycle including a back and forth rotation of the rotation body occurring for each cutting tooth across a predetermined circumferential angle of the control contour;
• the control contour of the rotation body comprises initial values for a plurality of relief contours of a cutting tooth to be ground, at least one of the contours being a composite curve;
• and
• selection of the circumferential angle from the entire circumferential area of the control contour, together with speeds for the scanning movement and the workpiece rotation, determine the relief contour of the cutting teeth.