Application expertise in grinding

Users of cylindrical grinders are demanding higher levels of production consistency over size, geometry and surface finish, plus long term machine and process reliability.

There has been a distinct shift towards highly specialised cylindrical grinding applications in the UK requiring bespoke solutions for large, high value, and growing complexity of components in difficult and unusual materials. Users, due to the high risk often associated with the type of component, are also demanding ever higher orders of production consistency over size, geometry and surface finish with an increasing requirement for machine and process reliability over extended periods of production life.

 Dick Aldrich, Sales Director of RK International based in Erith, has been involved for some 12 years in meeting the progressive change in the demands of industry towards more challenging grinding solutions through RK’s relationship with Robbi, the Italian specialist in cylindrical and internal grinding. ’To be successful in providing a viable grinding solution you have to be able to respond with ever-higher application-specific solutions particularly for aerospace and defence,’ he says. ’Due to the level of application expertise and problem solving capability available through Robbi, this has opened doors to successful installations as diverse as wind turbine, rollers for the food industry and machine tool bearings.’

Breaking new ground is the Omicron T5 universal sliding-gap machine with a capacity of up to 1,000mm dia by 2,030mm between centres. It has two wheelheads each having hydrodynamic spindles which are carried on independent carriages on its cast iron bed. It incorporates a split table that also enables long tapers to be ground. As both wheelheads are totally independent, they can be applied to separately grind both a face and OD with the advantage of applying different wheels and grinding data.

Controlled by Siemens 810 D the wheelhead can be rotated 180 deg with an index swivel of 2.5 deg using either manual or auto-positioning. Using the PLC based control, up to eight different diameters can be programmed on the same part, each having total independence for setting factors such as speeds, feeds and spark-out routines. Marposs Micromar E9 can also be incorporated for precise closed-loop control of the process. The machine also has the option to carry an internal spindle for integrated external, face and internal processing.