Advanced Grinding Solutions

The EMO show was a very busy one for Advanced Grinding Solutions (AGS) as no less than 9 of their principals were exhibiting their latest machines.

Bahmuller (internal/external grinders) Tschudin (centreless grinders) and Handling Tech (loaders) were all kept busy throughout the duration of the show on their combined stand. A number of UK customers raised serious enquiries; especially for the new Tschudin Pro-400 CNC centerless grinder with the HandlingTech Lean Automation Plus loader. Benefits for the customer are time saving, high autonomy due to a vertical component storage system and space saving as the automation is contained within the machines footprint. Patented features of the Tschudin machine include being able to load parts to the work rest blade outside of the grinding area and with the control wheel being mounted on its own vertical CNC axis for perfect and fast setups.

Especially pleasing was for AGS to meet with several of its major UK customers during EMO and to see high value orders being placed at the show for Rollomatic CNC Tool Grinding machines. Next year is going to be a busy one for Rollomatic here in the UK as already there are numerous machines under build for UK tool makers who are investing in Rollomatic NP3 and NP5 machines for the preparation of cutting tool blanks and for the machining of punches, and of course for the 5-axis and 6-axis Rollomatic machines that are used for the grinding of rotary cutting tools such as endmills, drills and burrs as used by the aerospace, medical and general engineering industries. Rollomatic highlighted its excellent and industry leading 3-year parts & labour warranty on new machines with free software updates for life for its customers.

Gerber exhibited its high-performance brush based deburring system called "BS Power". The BS-Power machine has one or two planetary brush heads and can process and polish workpieces up to a diameter of 400 mm or both sides up to 180 mm evenly. The Gerber BS Power is designed to be powerful enough to remove heavy ridges from punched, lasered, milled, turned or ground parts both quickly reliably with good repeatability.

Magnetfinish exhibited its brand new MF63CR machine that was of great interest to UK cutting tool manufacturers and is used to polish the flutes on cutting tools and to generate a precise radius on cutting tool edges to greatly increase the performance and tool life of all types of cutting tools. The machine has a new fast load robot with pallets for the storage of cutting tools that may be loaded in any order. The Magnetfinish machine can be equipped with OEM pallets from grinding machine companies such as Rollomatic so tools can stay in their original pallets and be processed straight after grinding. The machine shown at EMO demonstrated the full processing of cutting tools followed by the automatic cleaning of tools in an ultrasound wash station and a final drying operation. A laser automatically detects tool diameter and tool lengths and the machine can process most tools in a floor to floor time of around 20 seconds. Magnetfinish is a remarkable new process that has been developed to dramatically increase the performance and lifetime of all types of cutting tool. Many cutting tools can last over twice as long and be ran at much higher speeds and feeds after being processed using Magnetfinish technology. Abrasive powder is processed by magnets across the surface of the cutters with controlled but variable directions. The ground surfaces of cutting tools are polished to a roughness of 0.02 mm Ra and the outside edges and chip cutting edges are machined with a precisely defined and fully reproducible radius of between 3um and 50um.

The highlight on the FLP stand was their high precision 840 double wheel Lapping/Fine Grinding machine as sold to a major manufacturer of ceramic components. This advanced machine allows end users to lap parts with a rotating wheel speed of some 800 rpm leading to very fast cycle times. Apart from selling the highly precise lapping machines, FLP holds over £2.5million worth of lapping consumables in stock and offers end users of all types of lapping machine the largest range of wear parts and consumables.

Nova who are a leading manufacturer of machines for the production grinding of bearings, with well over 900 machines in use today, were very pleased with the enquiries they received at EMO with AGS working on several on their behalf here in the UK.

With AGS offering a complete solution for tool manufacturers, its range of Rollomatic tool grinders for blank preparation and finish grinding, and with Magnetfinish and Gerber machines for deburring and edge preparation, its line up at EMO was completed with Platit machines as used for the coating of tools.

Platit highlighted at EMO their 411 plus machine that received its world-wide debut and which allows small to medium sized cutting tool manufacturers to start up their own in-house coating facility. This machine has 3 lateral rotating cathodes and despite the lower investment costs, the machine can cope with practically all market coating grade requirements. Platit are a leading developer and manufacturer of highly advanced coating machines that are based on plasma generating PVD technology and Platit offers complete turn-key coating solutions including all necessary peripheral equipment. Platit coating machines work on the basis of the Conventional Cathodic ARC principle and the revolutionary LARC® (LAteral Rotating Cathodes) and CERC® (Central Rotating Cathodes) technologies. These technologies are patented and are unique.

AGS were delighted with the number of enquiries received at the EMO and are now working on 30 serious projects following the show and currently have 14 grinding machines under order with a global value of around £6.5m for the UK from its customers in the fuel injection, medical and cutting tool industries. Chris Boraston MD at AGS comments that "The EMO was a really excellent show both in terms of the numbers of visitors, with probably a record number visiting from the UK, but also when considering the orders that were placed at the EMO - especially on the Rollomatic stand, and the high number of enquiries we received that are very interesting and perfect for the niche market top of the range machines that we sell. It was great to meet with so many UK engineers who are looking to invest in the very best machines to boost their production and to see the synergy that we have created throughout our machine range. For example, one leading UK cutting tool manufacturer placed an order on the Rollomatic booth for a tool grinding machine, and we were then able to show them the latest Magnetfinish edge prep machine and the new Platit tool coating machine all within a matter of minutes. That’s what the EMO is all about and it will generate a great deal of business for us and it’s so pleasing to see UK based manufacturing companies investing heavily in production equipment as their order book rise with growing sales both at home and abroad".

AGS can be contacted for further information via their website www.advancedgrindingsolutions.co.uk or on 02476 22 66 11.