Grinding is an abrasive machining process that uses a grinding wheel as the cutting tool.

A wide variety of machines are used for grinding:

Hand-cranked knife-sharpening stones (grindstones)

Handheld power tools such as angle grinders and die grinders
Various kinds of expensive industrial machine tools called grinding machines
Bench grinders often found in residential garages and basements
Grinding practice is a large and diverse area of manufacturing and toolmaking. It can produce very
fine finishes and very accurate dimensions; yet in mass production contexts it can also rough out
large volumes of metal quite rapidly. It is usually better suited to the machining of very hard materials
than is "regular" machining (that is, cutting larger chips with cutting tools such as tool bits or milling
cutters), and until recent decades it was the only practical way to machine such materials as
hardened steels. Compared to "regular" machining, it is usually better suited to taking very shallow
cuts, such as reducing a shafts diameter by half a thousandth of an inch or 12.7 m.
Grinding is a subset of cutting, as grinding is a true metal-cutting process. Each grain of abrasive
functions as a microscopic single-point cutting edge (although of high negative rake angle), and
shears a tiny chip that is analogous to what would conventionally be called a "cut" chip (turning,
milling, drilling, tapping, etc.)[citation needed]. However, among people who work in the machining fields, the
term cutting is often understood to refer to the macroscopic cutting operations, and grinding is often
mentally categorized as a "separate" process. This is why the terms are usually used in separately in
shop-floor practice.