Current Process
Conventional cutting processes use an abrasive chop saw, band saw, lathe cutoff, or shear cutting machine. Each method has its disadvantages. Tooling wears quickly and is expensive, driving up costs.

Challenges
The material used to manufacture aerospace fasteners is difficult to cut using conventional equipment. Cutting oil is expensive, messy, and creates a hazardous work area. Band saws leave a rough surface finish and inaccurate length tolerance, requiring secondary processing. Cutting bars individually on a lathe is a slow process limiting output per shift. The thickness of the lathe cutoff tools wastes expensive material, generating a high cost per cut. Carbide tooling wears quickly leaving a large burr. The burr gets worse as the tool wears. Shear cutting is very loud and leaves a deformed end. Conventional saws are noisy and have minimal safety features.

Glebar Company’s position in the machine tool industry is driven by its solution orientated leadership and skilled engineering staff. Market studies have indicated a healthy growth cycle in the specialty carbide cutting tool industries especially in the aerospace sector. Glebar identified this opportunity and introduced a new machine platform, the GT-610 EZ Thrufeed Centerless Grinder. This machine was designed specifically for the thru-feed processing of carbide cutting blanks with the intention of meeting a certain price point for that industry.

Current Process
Narrow grinding wheels are used applying more pressure to the part wearing the wheel out faster. Multiple thrufeed grinds are required occupying skilled operators and accelerating wear on the grinding machine and tooling. Legacy machines are extremely large in comparison to the small diameter of the carbide cutting blanks and take up valuable square footage on the manufacturing floor.

Challenges
Carbide is one of the hardest metals on Earth, ranging in hardness between 65 and 85 Rc, and after sintering has a rough surface finish and chips easily making it difficult to grind. Deliver a process to grind carbide cutting blanks while maintaining cylindricity of 2 microns over a 4” long part.

Challenge:

The customer was outsourcing grinding of components and came to Glebar looking for a way to reduce lead times on parts, reduce costs, and bring grinding capability in-house.

Original challenge was to thrufeed 1-½” diameter, 15’ aluminum tubes removing 0.003”-0.006” per pass. The second requirement was for the machine to be capable of grinding 8’ steel tubes which featured a 1” diameter bearing surface in the middle of the tube which could not be ground. This meant that the grind would have to begin in the middle of the tube where the machine had to infeed into that section and then initiate a thrufeed process. The part also had a thin wall that had to be maintained and the grinding process had to be controlled to avoid burning.

Challenge: To grind diameters on parts of many sizes and lengths for a manufacturer of aerospace fasteners. The goal was to provide a solution that gave the customer a machine with intelligence, in-process inspection, ease of use and to maximize up time and production rates. 

Current Process:

The grinding of stainless-steel shafts used for Hydraulic Spring Lifters was outsourced. This resulted in higher costs, as well as quality and consistency issues.

Challenges:

Deliver an in-house process to automatically grind a high volume of stainless-steel shafts used for Hydraulic Spring Lifters. The process had to remove a large amount of stock and maintain an 8Ra surface finish. The customer requested that the new process be integrated with their existing automation and superfinishing line.

Challenge: To grind both sides of composite strips (fiberglass), fully automated at high speed with tight tolerances.