Finishing of silicon wafers is a billion dollar global business. The present process chain consists of several processes, which lead to long production times and increase the cost of the finished materials. In the recent years, several processes have been experimented as an alternate process for finishing substrate wafers with stringent specifications. However, there are no successful alternate processes, which have been adopted by the wafer processing industries. The electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) grinding is one of the processes that has already been experimented on silicon wafers for producing mirror surface finish. However, the flatness achieved from the ELID grinding is not reported. The main influence on the flatness of the wafers during ELID grinding may be due to the wear of the grinding wheels. The wear mechanism of electrolytically dressed wheels has not been fully understood and reported. The main objective of this study is to report the wear behaviors of the wheels during thinning and fine finishing of substrate wafers. The experimental results provide the conditions for utilization of the non-linear behavior of the electrolytically dressed grinding wheels for thinning and fine finishing processes. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.