Electrolytic grinding is most suitable for parts that are difficult to remove burrs from. Even if mechanical grinding may be more efficient in material removal, for parts that are troublesome time consuming with burrs and deformations, electrolytic grinding is more advantageous.

[Fig.1] is an automotive valve body made of cast aluminum alloy, as an example.

The material is not particularly difficult to grind, but the part has a complex pattern on its surface and is very time consuming for burr and deformation removal if ground with conventional mechanical methods. By electrolytically grinding this part, grinding efficiency will be lower but the total merit would be high since there is no issue with burrs and deformations.

The above is true for grinding honeycomb shaped ends of parts also. Mechanical grinding will cause burrs on the honeycomb structure, but electrolytic grinding will avoid this.

For thin parts that require a relatively large amount of material removal, conventional mechanical means would have to grind small amount at a time from both sides, many times back and forth to avoid the material from deforming. Electrolytic grinding is not limited by such shortcomings.

For example, gauge plates (made of special tool steel) with 0.5mm thickness have 0.3mm material removal required. With a conventional machine grinding, only 50 parts per day was the production limit, but electrolytic grinding enabled this limit to be raised to 300 per day.
The example shown in [Fig.2] are knitting machine needles. The needles are made of SK5 alloy, hardness HRC40, the work table chuck fixtures 200 needles, cutting depth is 0.7mm, applied current is 75A, process time per part is 0.8 seconds, and the accuracy of machining is ±0.01mm.