Containing Grinding Process Costs

To paraphrase Charles Dickens: “The best of times…the worst of times…are both perfect times to evaluate your grinding process costs and take steps to contain them.”

Obviously, when the economy is slow, identifying and eliminating excessive costs in any manufacturing process is just sound business practice. It’s how good companies maintain a competitive edge.

When the economy is heating up, many manufacturers are dismayed when they learn that their grinding processes are not delivering better economies of scale that were anticipated with higher production volumes. In these cases, grinding process cost reductions are desirable for improving profitability.

No matter what the motivation, you can achieve substantial levels of success in your quest for reduced grinding process costs by following 5 steps outlined below:

1. Focus on Total Grinding Process Performance: Compare any historical data you have on your grinding process to its current performance and how cost per part has trended. Is there a specific event that resulted in a dip in its performance? What has changed since your line was at peak economic efficiency (e.g. new materials, changed specifications, different abrasive products, other factors)?

Also, go directly to the source and ask engineers and operators about any day-to-day problems that they may be experiencing. How do these problems impact total process grinding performance and costs.

cost calc tool

Based on what you learn, detail the costs associated with your total grinding process so that you can determine what changes would have the most favorable cost reduction impacts. Our popular Total Cost Calculation Tool was specifically designed to make this process easier.

2. Fix Obvious Grinding Problems: Grinding problems impact manufacturing quality, productivity and profitability. In step 1 you found out what some of the problems are. By resolving them, you can not only reduce rejects and lead times, but costs as well. The top ten problems encountered by Meister Field Service Engineers are:

• Taper
• Roundness
• Shape
• Surface Finish Too Rough
• Fluctuations After Dress
• Metal Loading in the Wheel
• Chatter
• Noisy Grind
• Hot Parts
• Wheel Wear

Fixing any of these problems is likely to improve cost per part along
with quality. We have identified the most common grinding problems, their symptoms and the steps that can be taken to correct them in our white paper: Top Ten Bore Grinding Problems…and how to solve them…TODAY.” Although it is primarily directed to bore grinding, most of the problems and solutions apply equally well to other types of grinding.  Also, the search engine of the Meister Toolbox can provide a treasure-trove of helpful information and case histories.

3. Dress for Success: One of the most effective ways to fix problems that are impacting grinding process quality, productivity and costs. is to evaluate and adjust the method for dressing your grinding wheels. When Meister Engineers are called out to help solve a customer’s grinding problem, the majority of changes they make involve dressing. We often show our customers how to make their vit bonded CBN or diamond wheel sharper for more aggressive cutting or duller for a smoother surface finish, simply by adjusting the dressing parameters.

More often than not, when these dressing issues are resolved, total grinding process costs are reduced at the same time because:

• Greater productivity translates into lower cost per part
• Better quality reduces the scrap rate
• Longer wheel life lowers abrasive costs

dress calc tool

There is a great deal of information in the Toolbox about dressing better. Our article, Dress for Success is a particularly good place to start.  And with the trend towards more and more micro-precision, look for an updated dressing article on the subject later this year. You’ll also want to rely on our handy Dress Calculation Tool designed to help when setting up optimal parameters for dressing of vitrified CBN and Diamond grinding wheels.

4. Review Abrasive Technology Alternatives: Once  you have taken steps 1-3, you might want to evaluate the grinding wheel you are using. We have many customers who are happy using the same vit CBN wheels and dressing tools they started out with ten and even twenty years ago. But things – like materials, specifications, coolants, etc. – change. So there may be wheels and dressing solutions better suited to your current needs.

To get more parts per wheel at desired quality levels, it may be necessary to make the wheel harder or softer or alter its porosity. There are all kinds of possibilities. Meister has a portfolio of abrasives and dressing technology solutions that can be custom tailored to your exact requirements.

Have Spreadsheet Will Travel!

5. Pick Low Hanging Fruit First: Tom Cappadona, our Midwest Sales/Applications Engineer, has a spreadsheet with over 82 variables that can be altered in a myriad ways to fine-tune a grinding process. This is a very granular tool used by an expert troubleshooter to find and fix unique problems (proverbial needles in a haystack). In most cases, great success can be achieved by doing something far simpler – pick the low hanging fruit!

Start by selecting a single variable – one most likely to be the root cause of process problems as outlined in step 2 – and make some big changes to it. First, make a big change in one direction. Does it help or does it hurt? Then try going in the other direction. If that has little influence on the result you want, then go on to the next thing.  In most cases, it won’t take long to arrive at relatively simple changes that result in significant cost reductions.

6. Conclusion: In this post we have discussed five simple steps you can take to reduce costs associated with your grinding processes. If your objective still proves elusive, there is one additional step you should take. Contact a Meister Sales/Applications Engineer. We’re ready and willing to lend a hand.

Call on us!