The cutting links on chainsaws needs to be sharpened regularly to retain its sharpness. The most effective way is to use a machine wheel grinder. However, due to high friction there is a high risk of tempering the steel and damaging the sustainability to wear, resulting in a dull cutting edge. In order to develop a grinding method that produces a good result every time, a series of parameters were tested in order to determine which combination of these generated the best grinding results. With all parameters established the results shows that the attributes of each grinding wheel are the main parameter controlling the grinding result. This project investigates the attributes of different grinding wheels and their impact on grinding results. By comparing the energy each grinding wheel uses to perform the same amount of work, each grinding wheels suitability is rated based on its performance.   The calculations and the results from the analyses and tests show which of the grinding wheels performed the work with the lowest amount of increased energy.

Manufacturers of saw chains continuously strive to increase the performance of their products by reducing cutting times and minimising the energy consumption required for cutting. However, the evaluation process through testing is problematic as several uncontrollable factors impact the results. A large source of uncontrollable factors is the material used as a workpiece. Historically, wood has been used as a workpiece material since it is often what the end user will use it for. As a natural material, each stem contains a unique structure and can have a high variation in mechanical properties. Consequently, the analysis of older cutting efficiency is problematic since the result is linked to the specific stem being sawn, which is destroyed during the testing process. The current work aims to improve the repeatability of these tests by increasing the understanding of which material characteristics and material properties impact the variance during cutting efficiency measurements. An experiment was performed using pine as a workpiece material. It was found that the wood structure, density and hardness or moisture content could explain approximately 80% of the variation in the final tests. A more homogeneous material polyethylene was used to explore if a decrease in variation within these factors resulted in lower variance between cutting efficiency results. The variance between results was found to be lowest in pine when knots were excluded. The variance in polyethylene was slightly higher but showed promising evidence for being a suitable alternative material for long-term testing.