Most of the grinders use high-speed rotation wheel for grinding,  a small  use oilstone, belt, other abrasive and free abrasive free for grinding, such as honing machines, superfinisher, abrasive belt grinder, grinder and polisher And so on.

Grinder can process the higher hardness materials, such as hardened steel, carbide and so on; also process brittle materials such as glass, granite. Grinder can carry out High-precision grinding and a small surface roughness grinding , also carry out high-efficiency grinding, such as strong grinding.

 The 30s in the eighteenth century, in order to adapt to processing of hardened parts such as watches, bicycles, sewing machines , Britain, Germany and the United States developed grinder which use natural abrasive wheel. At that time, grinder is restructured to instal grinding head in the off-the-shelf tools such as lathes, planer . restructuring, the structure simple, low rigidity, when carry out grinding easy to have vibration, require workers to have a very high degree of skill for precision work piece

1876 Paris Expo exhibition in the United States Brown - Sharp-made universal cylindrical grinder, grinding machine for the first time with the basic characteristics of modern machinery. Its work piece and install Tailstock moving back and forth in the table, bed box increased the rigidity of machine tools and grinding with a round in the annex. In 1883, the company made from grinding head mounted on a column, moving back and forth for the table surface grinder.