Grinding wheel balancers boost steel quality

The SBS grinding wheel balancer can be permanently installed on almost any model of grinding machine and is capable of reducing machine spindle vibration to 0.1 - 0.2um.

Sheffield Forgemasters Engineering (SFEL) specialises in the manufacturing of forged work rolls for a variety of heavy engineering applications.

Its current work roll facility produces forged steel work rolls used mainly in steel strip plants and cold mills for strip metal production.

Approximately 90% of forged work rolls produced by SFEL are for export, with many of its customers requiring very high tolerances, typically less than 0.5um surface roughness on forged rolls used in the manufacture of strip metal products and less than 0.2um for aluminium foil.

The only way to achieve the desired surface finish is by grinding the rolls, which can be up to 5.3m long and 12,000kg in weight.

However, any imperfections or "chatter" marks from the grinding process on the forged rolls can be transferred to the final strip mill products, demonstrating the need for highly accurate and consistent grinding.

As part of a continuous programme at SFEL to further improve the surface roughness and finish of forged steel rolls, the company has invested in six SBS (Schmitt Balance Systems) automatic grinding wheel balancers from Schmitt Europe for the Herkules and Churchill roll grinding machines used in the hardened roll finishing process.

A major cause of chatter marks appearing on the surface of a roll can be vibration on the grinding machine spindle induced by imbalance in the grinding wheel.

Each wheel weighs 80kg, is 730mm in diameter, 100mm thick and rotates at 700rev/min.

The SBS grinding wheel balancer can be permanently installed on almost any model of grinding machine (roll, cylindrical, centreless and surface) and is capable of reducing machine spindle vibration to 0.1 - 0.2um by automatically moving tungsten weights to counteract grinding wheel imbalance.

The system can be integrated into a machine CNC or offered as a standalone solution.

Immediately after installation SFEL saw a major reduction in light chatter marks seen on the surface of finished ground rolls.

The company has been able to completely eliminate an anti-chatter process which could previously take up to one hour of production time per finished ground roll.

For SFEL this means a 10% increase in productivity and increased profitability.

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