Patent ID: 8708775

Claim:
A method of grinding an elongated continuously cast slab workpiece of rectangular section having a pair of generally planar, parallel, and opposite wide faces and a pair of generally planar, parallel, and opposite narrow edge faces, the method comprising the steps of sequentially: a) orienting the workpiece in a working position on a support with one of the wide faces directed upward, the workpiece extending along a horizontal longitudinal axis, and the narrow edge faces directed horizontally; a′) providing a hood shield around at least 180° of the grinding wheel; b) with the workpiece in the working position and while rotating the wheel about a wheel axis substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis, simultaneously engaging a grinding tool with the one wide face while relatively longitudinally reciprocating the tool and workpiece while transversely indexing the tool and workpiece after each reciprocation to surface treat the one wide face; c) with the workpiece in the working position and while rotating the wheel about a wheel axis substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis, reorienting the tool adjacent one of the narrow edge faces and thereafter simultaneously engaging the grinding tool with the one narrow edge face while relatively longitudinally relatively displacing the tool and the workpiece to surface treat the one edge face; and reorienting the hood shield by about 90° between steps b) and c) to prevent contact of the shield with the workpiece.