Abstract: To obtain a high quality surface in the grinding of zirconia ceramics, single factor experiments were used to study the effects of grinding depth, grinding wheel linear speed and workpiece feed speed on the surface quality of zirconia ceramics in precision grinding and its material removal mechanism. The surface morphology of the ground samples was observed by ultra field depth three-dimensional microscope and scanning electron microscope. Orthogonal experimental carried out to optimize the grinding parameters and verify them. Results show that the grinding surface roughness increases with the increase of grinding depth and workpiece feed speed. The grinding surface roughness first decreases and then increases with the increase of grinding wheel linear speed. The optimal combination is grinding depth of 5 μm, grinding wheel linear speed of 40 m/s and workpiece feed speed of 1 000 mm/min. Under the optimum grinding conditions, the average roughness of surface R_a is 0.388 9 μm, 0.417 0 μm and 0.403 7 μm in the three groups of zirconia ceramics grinding experiments.