Tschudin Cube #5 for SLE

Centerless Perfection at Smithstown.

It's been a very busy time at Smithstown Light Engineering (SLE) with them investing in additional grinding capacity to meet a further upturn in orders, with Advanced Grinding Solutions (AGS) supplying them with multiple new machines.

Pictured after another satisfactory machine acceptance this May at Tschudin’s factory, in Grenchen, Switzerland, is Gerard Henn, CEO of Smithstown; Marc Tschudin, CEO of Tschudin AG; Chris Boraston, MD at AGS; and engineers from Tschudin's project and automation teams.

Advanced Grinding Solutions also announces the supply of a further two Rollomatic Tool grinding machines, complete with Comat Superfiltration Systems, to SLE after an order placed in February.

They will soon be in action alongside this Tschudin Cube centerless grinding machine, the 5th such machine that AGS has supplied to Smithstown in the last 3 years, bringing the total order value of grinding machines and associated equipment supplied to SLE by AGS to over £6 million.

Gerard Henn was delighted to accept his 5^th Tschudin machine, with the delivery being brought forward to help meet the rise in demand from their customers in the medical industry. Gerard comments that the Tschudin machines, which are being run 24/7 with full automation, have proven to work extremely well and meet quality and output targets.

Smithstown Light Engineering recently celebrated five decades of manufacturing excellence and growth in Shannon since the company was founded in 1974 by Brian King. Starting with a modest team of four skilled toolmakers, today, they employ over 260 people at their plants in Shannon and in Rzeszów, Poland, that have seen record expansion in recent years, under the management of Gerard King and Gerard Henn.

The Tschudin machines enable end users to achieve significant productivity gains, and the machines' particularly quick and flexible changeover times help minimise machine downtime. What sets the Cube machine apart is its very small size and radical open design for easy access.

The Tschudin Cube uses Tschudin's patented W-axis, which has the workrest blade mounted onto its own CNC axis that allows for parts to be loaded onto it outside of the grinding area, making loading efficient, fast, and safe. Traditional centerless grinding machines require parts to be loaded onto a fixed work-rest blade that sits inside the machine between the grinding wheel and control wheel, making loading difficult, more expensive, and sometimes unsafe. This also makes changeovers more complex and therefore lengthier. The Tschudin machine overcomes all of these issues and claims to be the world's easiest and fastest centerless grinding machine to set up.

Another huge benefit from Tschudin’s CNC workrest blade axis is that it allows multiple parts to move to an initial position for a rough grinding operation to remove a lot of stock material quickly, before automatically being transferred to a second position for a final finish grinding position to enable fine finishes and tolerances to be achieved. For example, it is possible to load 5 parts to the work rest blade and have a machine with 10 grinding wheels; 5 rough wheels and 5 finishing wheels, with the parts being automatically transferred between the two different sets of wheels.

Linear direct drives on the X, U, and W axes ensure flexibility and productivity with the Cube being specifically developed for the grinding of small components. The Cube can be specified with a 205mm wide grinding wheel with a 12Kw grinding spindle for grinding up to 63 m/sec and is perfect for the production grinding of parts from 0.1mm in diameter up to 20mm in diameter and brings true sub-micron grinding capability for the centerless grinding of a huge variety of parts.

The multiple Tschudin machines at Smithstown Light Engineering are all equipped with Fanuc robots for unmanned shift work, whereby specialist medical parts are loaded from pallets, machined, and then placed back into pallets.

A high precision grinding machine requires the best possible filtration, and the Comat super-filtration systems in use at SLE were specified and supplied by Advanced Grinding Solutions, along with the machines, and will keep the Rollomatic and Tschudin grinders in a perfect condition for many years to come. Comat manufactures super-filtration systems that deliver ≤ 2-3μm filtration quality and, importantly, do so throughout the entire working cycle whilst minimising lifetime running costs and maintaining maximum coolant consistency. Importantly for end users, the Comat filter systems use their Intelligent Performance Technology that allows them to be remotely monitored in real-time during the manufacturing processes, with customers' filter systems fine-tuned by Comat to ensure that the optimum filtration quality is obtained.

For more information, see: www.advancedgrindingsolutions.co.uk