Product category:
Honing, polishing, burnishing and lapping
News Release from: Apperley Honing | Subject: Honing tools
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 29 March 2004
Retrofittable honing tools improve metal
cutting
A range of honing tools that can be retro-fitted to existing honing machines improve metal removal rates, reduce running costs and importantly eliminate the invasive honing squeal.
A range of noning tools that can be retro-fitted to existing honing machines improve metal removal rates, reduce running costs and importantly eliminate the invasive honing squeal The desire to achieve improved performance in their own contract machine shop has led Apperley Honing to develop a range of tools that can be retro-fitted to existing honing machines to improve metal removal rates, reduce running costs and importantly eliminate the invasive honing squeal
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 12 Jun 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Apperley Honing's Charles Sanders comments 'Large power honing machines haven't benefited from the radical improvements that NC/CNC controls have given to more conventional metal cutting machines and the process of honing metal from the inside of long tubes is much the same today as it always has been.
Because of this there hasn't been the demand to update old honing kit and so there are very many ancient honing machines still in daily use around the world today.
Most of them still go up and down and round and round as well as they ever did, but are often running at less than optimum efficiency because they're using warn out tooling that hasn't been updated to today's standards.
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'Traditional honing heads feature 4, 6 or maybe 8 radially mounted honing stones.
Each honing stone is either glued, using a hot melt polyvinylacetate adhesive known as 'Red Powder', or crimped onto it's own stone-holder.
Each mounted stone is then individually aligned in the hone-head around a central wedge.
'These traditional tools work well and can be relied upon to achieve exacting tolerances but you need a huge inventory of expensive hone-heads to cover the full range of bore diameters that are likely to be encountered throughout any machines working life.
Additionally changing the consumable Stones on the Holders is either expensive, using disposable holders, or messy, if using stones glued onto the holders using a hotplate and Red Powder.
Then finally there is the noise problem.
Honing with traditional tooling can create a horrible squealing noise that sounds pretty similar to the love call of a killer whale.
Anyone who has had to suffer this will know exactly how bad it can be.
H and S people don't like it, the neighbours don't like it, and most of all the operators and anyone else working within about 100m of a machine creating the squeal don't like it.' Apperley have responded to the faults of traditional honing heads by replacing the individual stone-holders with two opposed shells and it is the design and detail of Apperley Honing's shell type holders that are the key to the benefits of this tooling • With Apperley Ranger tooling, only one hone-head is needed, with a small number of shells each slightly thicker than the next, to cover a range of diameters that previously would have required several separate expensive heads.
• Instead of gluing or crimping the stones to the holders they are now clamped in place.
Quick, efficient and without the need to either heat the stones up on a hot plate, or throw away old holders.
• The traditional honing squeal, caused by vibrations of the individual stones within the hone-head, is now eliminated because with Apperley's design the stones are unable to vibrate individually as they are rigidly clamped in pairs to the shell type holders.
Rigid clamping = No Vibration = No Noise.
Apperley Honing have now eliminated one of the most anti-social noises ever to emanate from a machine shop.
The Apperley Ranger tooling can be retrofitted to almost all existing horizontal and vertical power honing machines.
It is suited for all bore sizes from 50mm to 500mm diameter.
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