In the present work, the wear of monolayer electroplated cubic boron nitride wheel during grinding of Inconel 718 super alloy is investigated, and the influence of wear process on wheel topography is reported. The radial wear of the wheel was characterized by an early transient state followed by a steady state wear regime and finally a steel rise in wear rate. The initial transient region progressed up to radial wear of 21 μm. During the steady state region, the radial wear was in the range of 21 μm to 25.5 μm. Beyond the steady state region, there was a sudden increase of 8.5 μm radial wear depicting the progress of wear towards the failure region. The normal and tangential forces remained approximately constant up to about 21 μm wheel wear, and subsequently progressively increased to a maximum of 34 μm wear. The specific energy began approximately at about u = 240 J/mm3 and started progressing beyond radial wear of 21 μm and increased up to 540 J/mm3 at the wear of 34 μm. There was high initial roughness value with the fresh wheel with a progressive decrease with continued grinding due to the increase in active grains. © 2019 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers