ITC Tooling has taken delivery of a Walter Helitronic Micro CNC grinding centre that will provide additional capacity for the manufacturing and re-grinding of carbide and HSS cutting tools.

It will also provide additional capacity for the manufacturing and re-grinding of high specification drills and reamers in the 0.5 to 12.7mm diameter range.

Industrial Tooling Corporation has taken delivery of a Walter Helitronic Micro CNC grinding centre

An additional Helitronic Micro and Helitronic Power are on order and awaiting delivery.

The latest acquisition phase will take ITC’s total of Walter Helitronic tool grinders to 12.

The new machine incorporates linear drives that enable it to meet a linear accuracy of 0.0001mm and a resolution accuracy of 0.0001deg.

ITC first bought this machine to meet a capacity demand for its cutting tools, as its small-tool production was a bottleneck, as well as to enhance the quality of its products.

As opposed to previous machines, the Helitronic Micro has three grinding spindle heads for up to 12 grinding wheels, designed for flexibility in application.

This also enhances the quality of ITC tooling, as with the additional wheel, one wheel can be used solely for radius machining, another for flute machining and so on.

To ease the bottleneck created at ITC by the high demand for high-quality cutting tools, the company will be running regular batches of 500 to 800 cutting tools through the new grinding centre.

To this end, the new Helitronic Micro incorporates a Fanuc six-axis robot system for loading tools to the machining envelope.

ITC production manager Kevin Ford said: ‘We have only had the machine a matter of days, but we can immediately note that cutter loading time with the integrated robot is 10 seconds as opposed to 17-20 seconds on our other machines.

‘Additionally, the robot can grip the tool exactly where we want it to and this further strengthens the consistency of a batch of tools.

‘It also simplifies the production of awkward or non-uniform tools that may encounter difficulties with the double-push system on most grinding centres.

‘Additionally, the Walter Helitronic Micro has a self compensating system built-in, to continually measure thermal growth and compensate for any deviations.

‘This is another aspect that ensures a consistently accurate batch of tools is produced,’ he added.

Delivering versatile operation, FastGrind brings regrinding in-house for diverse industries and applications. Features facilitate and accelerate setup as well as lend to tool accuracy and surface finish quality. Specifically, machine employs double-ended HSK wheel spindle, iGrind software, and CNC grinding technology. Resharpening machine is also available, with some manufacturing capabilities. Grinding flexibility accommodates various tool types.

FastGrind: the Economical CNC Grinding Machine

The FastGrind offers all of the benefits that ANCA customers have enjoyed for many years at an extremely affordable price. The FastGrind is a versatile and flexible machine and is suited to a wide variety of industries and applications. It provides opportunities for companies to reduce costs by bringing regrinding in-house and is also ideally suited to companies looking for reduced risk in making the transition into CNC grinding technology.

The FastGrind has all of the essential elements the industry demands for cost-effective tool grinding, including:

Anca has introduced a cost-effective, entry-level CNC grinding machine that is suitable for re-sharpening and small-batch manufacturing.

Built on the platform of the Anca RX7, the only significant differences between the two machines are spindle power and appearance.

Illustrating the comprehensive nature of the Anca Fastgrind ‘package’, the new grinder includes all Anca innovations, such as direct-drive technology, polymer concrete base, MPG feed and Cim3D.

Most importantly, Anca’s Toolroom suite gives users unlimited access to a full range of powerful and user-friendly tool and cutter-grinding software.

By removing unnecessary high-production orientated options, such as auto loading and automated clamping, Anca has substantially reduced build costs and delivered its most affordable CNC grinding machine to date.

The elimination of superfluous accessories has allowed the Fastgrind to meet the specific requirements of re-sharpening or small-batch manufacturing and to deliver an unbeatable price/performance ratio.

Designed with regrinding capability in mind, the Fastgrind’s 3.7kW/5HP (8kW/10HP peak) offers sufficient power for re-sharpening tasks as well as a range of light-manufacturing tasks.

The Fastgrind’s appeal is not only limited to first time or small-scale CNC users.

Larger machine shops and manufacturing companies that experience high tool consumption can also realise significant cost savings by using the Fastgrind to provide a practical, in-house resharpening capability.

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Exhibiting for the first time at Subcon 2010, Central Grinding services has recently invested in new CNC grinding technology that brings a range of advantages for customers.

Subcontractor GB Precision has invested in a Studer S21 CNC grinding machine, which is suitable for use on high-accuracy components for the aerospace sector.

Micronz LLP supplied the S21 at the end of November and it is already proving its worth on many tasks, including the machining of bespoke thread forms with a maximum pitch error of 1.5 microns and the grinding of tapered polygons on the end of otherwise cylindrical geometric forms.

The machine also handles a range of high-precision grinding tasks for GB Precision, including the creation of external and internal spherical forms, often required for bearing races for aerospace components, where the surface finish across the whole part and the form accuracy is of critical importance.

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The company has released its OpenCNC grinder for CNC ID, OD and centerless grinders. The grinder consists of hardware, software and documentation and has been engineered to meet the needs of machine builders, integrators, end-users and retrofitters who specialize in CNC grinding machines, the company says.

The grinder maintains the flexibility and power of open architecture, while providing ease of use and built-in features of a standard package, the company says. It is said to allow machine builders and end-users to easily upgrade or interchange machine hardware, software and peripheral components without having to re-engineer their existing machine logic.

The part programming features include: 11 wheel dressing routines, eight grinding sequences, advanced grinding wheel offset tools and an online help system. Each part program can contain as many as 20 grinding sequences.

The hardware/software package comes with wiring diagrams, documentation and pro-written PLC logic that allows machine builders or integrators to complete a control retrofit without having to spend weeks writing and debugging special machine logic, the company says.

For more information from MDSI, call or enter MMS Direct code 947MF at www.mmsonline.com

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Similar in appearance to its predecessor, the RG6, the Coborn RG8 wet grinding machine can control as many as 16 axes simultaneously. Also, its Windows-based software enables more multitasking than the previous model. This brochure provides technical specifications, photographs and a description of the product, which is distributed solely by Precision International Corp. in North America.

For more information from Precision International Corp., call 888-304-1997 or enter MMS Direct code 279WB at www.mmsonline.com

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