Investigations on the grindability of titanium alloy with conventional wheel were mostly limited to a wheel speed of 30 m/s. Even with the monolayer electroplated cBN wheel, most of the experiments were limited to a wheel speed of 30 m/s. Surface residual stress which is the most important aspect of surface integrity of ground surface has also rarely been studied for titanium alloy. In the present work, the grindability of widely used titanium alloy, Ti-6Al-4V has been experimentally investigated in high speed grinding mode at a wheel speed of 90 m/s. Specific grinding energy was observed to be in the range of 160–200 J/mm 3 , which is much higher than the same observed while grinding ferrous alloys. For ferrous alloys, it is mostly limited within 100 J/mm 3 . No sign of wheel loading, grit pullout or grit tip adhesion of the chip was observed. Surface residual stress was found to be compressive in nature and become more compressive with increase in downfeed. However, surface residual stress was found to be highly tensile in the range of 300–500 MPa while using conventional SiC wheel. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.