Grinding wheel for the smoothing and polishing of glasses

Claim 1

In a machine for cracking-off, smoothing, bevelling and polishing the rim of a glass, comprising an upper rotatable gripping head (3) for gripping the glass (4) by its base (5), setting it into rotation about a vertical rotation axis, and urging it in a direction parallel to the rotational axis of the glass so that its rim (6) bears against the upper surface of each of two grinding wheels which are rotatable by floating motors (9), said wheels being horizontally spaced apart from one another by a fixed distance, said wheels also being arranged symmetrically and in secant fashion in respect to the direction of application of a rim of said glass (4) onto said grinding wheels, the improvement wherein: said grinding wheels (7, 8) are dish-shaped abrasive disks disposed in a common horizontal plane substantially perpendicular to said direction; each grinding wheel is an abrasive disk of a diameter of 100 to 300 mm and is constituted by a dish-shaped spring steel sheet (10) having a thickness of 0.5 to 3 mm, each disk having a downwardly inclined outer peripheral annular edge portion (13) having an imperforate continuous surface and an inwardly adjacent annular horizontal flat central portion (14) having an imperforate continuous surface, thereby avoiding a horizontal collision between (a) an outer edge of each disk and (b) the rim which is being applied onto said upper surface of the disk and which contains irregularities; and the inclination of the edge portion (13) ranges from 0.5 to 1.5 mm over a radial distance of between 5 and 15 mm.