Precision Custom Centerless Grinding
Steel 1 Company LLC has all the capabilities for any of your Centerless Grinding project needs. Long or short run orders, prototype production, you name it we can do it. We also offer TGP (Turned, Ground and Polished) as part of our Centerless Grinding services. When your business is in the stainless or nickel industry, the use of TGP (Turned, Ground, and Polished) cold finished bars for metal shafting is essential if you’re looking for accuracy and straightness. Centerless grinding can be integrated with the process for shafts to have highly accurate dimensions without the strain that the cold drawing method of producing straight round bars puts on the metal. TGP alloys also withstand shock and vibration and have a consistent hardness for reliable installation.
Not only do we supply machine grade metal alloys, we also offer Sinker, Wire EDM, CNC machining, Blanchard Grinding, custom Metal Fabrication, Flame – Laser – Plasma Cutting, Hollow Bar – Seamless Mechanical Tubing, Mattison Grinding, Blanchard Grinding, and Saw Cutting value added services. One stop sourcing means that if you purchase your products metal alloy through us can help you reduce costs when you use us for your secondary operations like Centerless Grinding.
The Centerless Grinding metal working process is often misunderstood because it does not use a form of clamping restraint or fixturing like Mattison Grinding or Blanchard Grinding metal working processes. Centerless Grinding instead uses just 3 components precisely positioned. In order to achieve a consistent quality result every time there are certain best practices that must be utilized.
What is Centerless Grinding:
Centerless Grinding is an OD (Outer Diameter) metal working process comprised of 3 components: a grinding wheel, a regulating wheel and the workblade. The configuration of 3 components is deceivingly simple. However if any calculation is not correct the centerless grinding will not be perfectly round nor on tolerance.
The workpiece is placed in between the grinding wheel and workblade. The workblade setup height in relation to center is the key to the success or failure of any project. If the workblade height is incorrectly calculated the grinding wheel will not give the desired roundness and finish on the workpiece. This is one of the main reasons the centerless grinding method of polishing metal is misunderstood.
3 Types of Centerless Grinding:
Thru-Feed Centerless Grinding (Through-Feed Grinding)
The Thru-Feed method of Centerless Grinding is used to grind straight cylindrical parts. The rotating wheel is used to rotate the entire length of the workpiece against the grinding wheel in a steady motion. This method is not used for parts that have varying diameters or complex shapes due to the axial movement and the inability to dress the grinding wheel for diameter changes. Because Thru-Feed Grinding can be automated and has a quick setup, it is perfect for production part processing of straight line cylinders.
In-Feed Centerless Grinding (AKA – Plunge Feed Grinding)
In-Feed Grinding is used to grind work pieces with relatively complex shapes of varying depths and curvatures. In-Feed Grinding has a longer setup time in order to accommodate the complex geometries of the parts to be ground.
Profile Grinding (AKA – End-Feed Grinding)
Profile Grinding can save extra steps normally required in order to accommodate parts with multiple diameters. The part will move in and out axially between the grinding wheels that have been set up for the various diameters. The diameters will become smaller in size which is not too much of an issue if the designer knows to accommodate for this reduction of material.
Why use Centerless Grinding:
Centerless Grinding can achieve excellent high tolerance roundness and surface finishes on a metal alloy work piece. The Centerless Grinding process can improve out-of-round work piece blanks better than any other grinding method. It also can be used for high to low production volumes depending upon the complexity of the part.
Centerless Grinding Tolerance and Finish Capabilities
Tolerance:
Standard OD tolerance for any job is +/- .0005
.500 OD and under we can go to +/- .0001
.500 to 1.000 we can hold +/- .0002
Greater than 1.000 we can hold +/- .0003
Finish:
Standard 32 RMS.
We can polish to 8 – 16 RMS if requested.