Why the competitive advantage you’ve been looking for may be waiting for you at Meister Abrasives’ 2018 IMTS Exhibit
Dr. Peter Beyer
CEO/CTO
In the late 1970’s Meister Abrasives pioneered the vitrified CBN grinding technology that other abrasives suppliers in the western world would not offer their customers for another decade. Meister prided itself in being lean and innovative… a technology-driven, customer-focused company intent on giving its user competitive advantages geared to improving quality, reducing costs, shortening lead times and solving technical problems presented by advanced materials and challenging geometries. That tradition continues to this day.
At the turn of the new century, Meister engaged Dr. Peter Beyer to become the Head of R&D and its Chief Technology Officer. He undertook a series of research initiatives that have kept Meister products in the forefront of abrasive machining solutions:
HPB Bond structure
HPB Technology: One of these developments was a unique, highly open HPB bonding matrix technology that allows Meister to alter the microscopic bond posts within the wheel to adjust the way abrasive crystals are presented to the workpiece. This technology, used with CBN abrasive crystals, has been shown to improve productivity while also reducing dressing frequency. HPB technology was formally introduced in 2004 and its development and extension has been ongoing.
Super-Porous Hybrid Bond
Hybrid Technology Extended to Dressers: cDD dressing tools rely on a unique structure in which high-quality CVD diamond inserts are strategically embedded within Meister’s hDD porous hybrid-bond diamond matrix. cDD dressing tools excel at both truing and sharpening. The hybrid-bond diamond matrix does a large amount of the dressing, while the inserts provide structural support and reinforcement. The cumulative advantages include: low dressing forces; sharper cutting wheels for higher quality parts; lower dress in-feeds and higher skip-dress. And the dressing tool stays sharp, so no conditioning is required.
On-Going Developments: Based on this proprietary research focus, Meister is continually expanding the range of high quality Diamond and CBN crystal alternatives and developing multiple bonding matrix solutions that allow the company to custom tailor its products to match application specific needs, such as:
- Single point diamond dressers that dramatically improve the performance of conventional grinding equipment.
- Anti-friction grinding tools that solve the problem of part burning.
- Double disk fine-grinding wheels for generating superior part surfaces.
- Super-abrasive technology transfers from unique applications in one market to solve abrasive manufacturing problems in another.
“Pushing the boundaries of current abrasive products is business as usual at Meister.”
No ‘Me-Too’ Products: Dr. Beyer said: “During the past decade Meister Abrasives has made enormous strides in the development of grinding and dressing tool substrates with unique bonding matrices. We are simply not interested in developing ‘Me-Too’ products that everyone else offers. So we develop everything ourselves. We rely on broad and deep knowledge, based on more than 60 years experience listening to our customers and developing solutions for their grinding problems.
“The advantages we create for one customer often apply to many others. For example, we have developed many technologies and materials specifically for the semiconductor industry. Now we have used these technologies at times for our classic VIT CBN applications. For example, our next innovation for gear grinding with CBN is powered by our semiconductor work and this spinoff is producing some really surprising results.”
These efforts have allowed Meister Abrasives to devise new categories of customizable, vitrified and hybrid bonded abrasive products that improve the performance of conventional grinding equipment and extend the already impressive capabilities of new CNC abrasive machining systems.
If your goals at IMTS are to find ways to improve your abrasive machining processes, then stop by the Meister booth (N-237341). We’re not looking to give you a sales pitch. We want to hear about your grinding performance objectives and what seems to be getting in the way.
If our Applications Engineers don’t have an immediate answer, then Dr. Beyer will most likely be hearing about it and putting it into his R&D queue.
We look forward to visiting with you at IMTS, Meister Abrasives Booth N-237341.
