Product category:
Tool and cutter grinding
News Release from: Walter GB | Subject: Helitronic Power tool grinders
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 03 May 2005
Tool and cutter grinding performed
overnight
Where a tooling company is making most of its savings - even with a mixed batch of just 50 tools - is by running a five-axis tool and cutter grinder overnight with no labour cost.
Nobody knows better than Tony Cooper the importance of the phrase 'time is money' As UK sales manager at OSG U.K., the world's largest manufacturer of taps and end mills, his sole aim is to enable customers to work smarter and faster, and therefore more profitably
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 20 Jun 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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"All manufacturing companies effectively operate in a global market, with their prices and performance constantly being compared with alternative suppliers overseas," he says.
"Demand is becoming so competitive that there is no doubt that companies which do not improve their production strategies will be out of business." With an understandable bias towards the use of more effective cutting tools via OSG's world leading range of tooling - including a just-announced deep hole drill that has immediately enabled one user to transform a 2.5 minute crankshaft hole production routine into a 12-second operation - Cooper is also professing to customers the economic wisdom of having their carbide tooling regularly reground.
"Nobody can argue with the facts," he continues.
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"Let us take a typical 7mm carbide coated drill, at a list price of GBP 56.75, that produces 2,633 through holes 15mm deep in S50C at a tooling cost per hole of 2p".
"To regrind and coat the tool at a cost of GBP 11.25, that same drill will then drill 2,600 similar holes at a tooling cost of only 5p." Another example concerns a 10mm carbide coated end mill, costing GBP 93.97, performing a side milling operation in SUS304, machining 430m a per metre tooling cost of 22p.
After regrinding and re-coating at a cost of GBP 20.57, when applied to 400m of machining the tooling cost per metre equates to less than 0.005p.
Couple such a financial incentive with the fact that companies of every size are minimising tool stocks, and it is no surprise that demand for OSG's regrinding services at its site in Harold Wood, Essex, is booming.
"Our aim has always been to offer a regrind service that replicates original tool life," Cooper continues, "But to do this we had to ensure we had the machines capable of reproducing tool forms accurately, consistently and cost-effectively".
"That is why we use five-axis Walter Helitronic Power tool grinders from Walter GB of Redditch." With the parent OSG Corporation in Japan having several Walter machines and OSG also selling Walter indexable tooling products as an agent in Japan, it was a natural choice to select the Helitronic Powers, says Cooper, "Because we knew Walter and we knew the quality and reliability of the machines".
OSG U.K.
has found the machines more than capable of handling all its regrinding demands: the 11.5kW spindle drives and digital drives ensure rapid traverse rates of 15m/min in all linear axes and 120 deg /sec on the rotational axes - and the machines can accommodate tools 350mm long (300mm for face grinding) and 320mm diameter.
Supplied with a wide range of tooling regrind programs as standard, the machines make light work of the required complex geometry, sub-micron tolerances and high surface finish requirements.
Each machine is fitted with a pallet Loader, for the unmanned processing of up to 280 tools depending on size, and Cooper highlights these devices as being particularly significant in terms of efficiency".
""After our experiences with the first machine's loader, when we ordered our second Power (last year) the addition of the Loader was a 'no brainer'".
"We can load several different batches of parts and all we do is instruct the machine where each batch is located and the rest is automatic," said Cooper".
""This is where we are making most of our savings - even with a mixed batch of just 50 tools - because we can run the machine overnight with no labour cost.".
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