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Abrasive machining, particularly creep-feed grinding, continues to develop it's capabilities. This development has created an ever-increasing demand for high quality grinding wheels.
Wheels which will remove material faster at exacting tolerances but without causing metallurgical damage the results are not reductions in grinding cycle times but importantly for you, lower grinding costs per part.
Winterthur Grinding Wheels are up to today's challenges to assist you in being more successful!Creep-feed grinding is an abrasive machining process mainly used to produce slots or intricate forms in difficult-to-grind materials such as prehardened tool steels and high-temperature nickel-base aerospace alloys. The process utilizes a grinding wheel to impart forms previously associated with milling or broaching operations into a workpiece in one pass, at full depth of cut and very slow table speeds. The use of creep-feed grinding has grown to meet the need for increased productivity and greater production efficiencies.
Creep-feed grinding has two main advantages over machining. First, it can work materials that are difficult and costly to shape by other methods. Second, it is easier to modify the form on a grinding wheel than it is on a broach or milling cutter, enabling rapid design alterations and changeovers.
The process also has several advantages over conventional reciprocating surface grinding:
More actual grinding time. Time lost with the wheel not in contact with the workpiece while reversing the table in conventional grinding, can exceed the actual time required to grind the part.
Less tendency to chatter. The increased depth of cut associated with creep-feed grinding produces a greater interface between the wheel and the workplace. This increased interface, combined with slower table speeds, has a tendency to stabilize any vibration generated during the grinding process.
Increased form-holding characteristics. The wheel enters the workpiece slowly and only once, generating complete form that equalizes the load over the entire wheel face. Entering slowly and only once eliminates the shearing of abrasive particles that occurs as the wheel repeatedly strikes the edge of the workpiece in conventional reciprocating grinding.
Less thermal damage. In conventional surface grinding, with lower depths of cut and increased spindle and table speeds, heat is generated (and transferred into the workpiece) in impulses. But in creep-feed grinding, the heat is a constant moderate influx distributed over a much greater area. The result is that a greater volume of the workpiece material is heated to lower average and maximum temperatures. Although the maximum temperature may reach a point high enough to cause thermal damage ahead of the grinding wheel, the disturbed material will be removed during, the grinding process.
