Company News

Coventry based Advanced Grinding Solutions announces a new range of specialist grinding wheels provided by its chosen abrasives partner Krebs & Riedel.

Since being appointed as the sole distributor for the Krebs & Riedel range of grinding wheels in 2009 the sales growth in the UK has been continuous and now exceeds £275,000 a year. Advanced Grinding Solutions sells various high-end grinding machines such as the Bahmuller internal and external Grinding machines that were being imported into the country with Krebs & Riedel wheels and this subsequently lead to the two companies deciding to work together to further promote the grinding wheels in the UK.

Krebs have now launched a new range of High Composite Carbon Fibre Wheel hubs that are available to suite their range of CBN and Diamond wheels. The use of these wheel hubs guarantees maximum strength, minimum weight and maximum rigidity. These hubs are over 75% lighter than traditional steel bodies and apart from easy handling their use dramatically decreases the load on grinding spindles during the grinding process.

The use of the Hi-Comp wheels allows end users to greatly improve ground quality (notably in terms of surface finish) whilst using rougher grinding wheels that remove stock faster to also speed up the grinding process to achieve much faster cycle times without any detriment to the finished part. The use of the carbon fire composite material acts as a form of damper that helps prevent vibrations from being transferred to the grinding point and thus surface quality is improved.

Krebs á Riedel Hi-Comp CBN wheels are available from 3mm to 900mm in diameter and Krebs the CBN wheels are especially suited for grinding hard-to-machine or high-alloy hardened steels starting from 54 HRC, such as high-speed steels, tool or chromium steels, nickel-based alloys, or white cast iron etc.

These wheels can be used with surface speeds in the region of 160-200m/sec and therefore can be used to grind parts much faster than conventional CBN wheels using steel hubs or cores. Parts are produced using significantly lower grinding forces so stress that can be generated into the surface of components is avoided curing burning or cracking issues that can be associated with very high speed grinding and savings are also made as grinding wheel life is also extended. It should also of course be understood that Krebs wheels are always able to be sent back for re-coating/refurbishing and therefore after the initial purchase the carbon fiber hub can be used numerous times before it eventually requires to be replaced.

Krebs & Riedel who were founded in 1895 have been manufacturing high quality standard, diamond and CBN abrasives for over 100 years and are able to count leading UK engineering companies such Delphi Diesel Systems amongst their ever growing customer base. Krebs who employs approx. 200 people is constantly introducing new types of wheels with improved grain structures and novel bonding systems that enhance grinding wheel quality and optimise performance.

Another area where Krebs & Riedel excels in is the supply of wheels for gear and thread grinding applications and special wheels are available to suit machines manufactured by Gleason-Pfauter, Oerlikon, Kapp- Niles, Hofler, Maag, Samputensili and Reishauer etc. Advanced Grinding Solutions (AGS) now supplies Krebs wheels to several top UK gear manufacturing companies who are able to call off specially profiled wheels for gear production on fast deliveries. Under agreement Krebs can keep customer’s blank wheels in stock and upon order will profile these to suit and then supply within just 2 or 3 days.

Another niche area that Krebs & Riedel have been active in is the supply of smaller diameter CBN wheels for jig grinding machines as used on Hauser or Moore machines. Often end users don’t wish to purchase large quantities of wheels and Krebs are able to supply high precision jig grinding wheels in batches as low as 5 pieces.

Chris Boraston, Managing Director at Advanced Grinding Solutions comments:
With our grinding machine customers being delighted with the results they were obtaining from using the new generation of Krebs wheels; when Krebs advised us that they were looking for a UK distributor to support their customers we were of course very interested.

When selling very high precision grinding machines that cost from £250,000 to well over £1,000,000 then it’s clearly important that only the very best grinding wheels are used and indeed these are the only way in which we can fulfil and exceed our customer’s expectations.

Krebs & Riedel are very process focused and really study a customer’s application in detail before suggesting what type of wheel should be used. They certainly do not simply offer an alternative to an existing wheel and prefer to look very hard at the application and to offer wheels based upon their own experience rather than someone else’s. Furthermore, we can rely upon the support of technical engineers who will also help set-up customers grinding machine to ensure that test wheels on trial bring the results that are necessary in terms of large improvements in quality, cycle time, or often both.

Such has been the success that we have had here in the UK with Krebs; we now hold over £80,000 worth of wheels in stock here for same day/next day delivery to our UK customers and this stock holding is growing as more and more engineering companies discover the advantages in improved part quality and in cost savings that Krebs wheels brings to them. Furthermore, unlike some other grinding wheel companies, Krebs understands that many end users do not want to purchase lots of wheels for stock if that can be avoided and therefore for most grinding applications there is no real minimum order quantity and where there is we are also able to retain wheels here at our base in Coventry and only supply, and therefore invoice, as customer’s actually need them.

Some of our UK customers literally only order a single wheel from us two or three times a year, others have several hundred wheels every month. Some buy huge CBN wheels that are expensive and others need small internal grinding wheels costing of course a fraction of that. Krebs is really able to support all customers – both large and small and that’s very important indeed to us as is their amazing track record of never having been late in supply on their quoted delivery time of a single wheel over the 7 years we have been doing business with them.

We are now supplying Krebs wheels for many different grinding applications with UK end-users using Krebs wheels to manufacture a huge variety of components such as turbine blades. We also have many other customers involved in manufacturing parts for the medical industry using Krebs dressable CBN wheels or otherwise conventional abrasives on cylindrical grinding and universal grinding machines.

Customers wishing to improve their grinding processes are invited to contact AGS who can arrange for free of charge test wheels to be made available to prove out the superior quality and efficiency that is achieved when choosing the latest wheel technology from Krebs & Riedel.

Advanced Grinding Solutions Ltd
Units 1 and 17 Steeple House
Percy Street
Coventry
CV1 3BY
T: +44 (0) 2476 22 66 11
E: sales@advancedgrindingsolutions.co.uk
W: www.advancedgrindingsolutions.co.uk