Custom Tailored Solution – 500,000 more parts per year

Finishing the contours of a fuel injection pump cam is a very challenging precision grinding application. As the cam rotates in the CNC Grinding machine, the wheel is continuously driven in and out to maintain constant contact with the part’s out-of-round surface. With every half rotation the area of contact of the wheel on the part varies from minimal to quite extensive.

Under these conditions, intermittent high surface area contact, the openness and porosity of the wheel is critical to minimize the potential for pinching off the flow of coolant into the contact area to avoid burning and other quality and throughput issues. Having a sharp wheel and being able to keep it sharp is also essential to maintain sustained levels of high productivity.

In this case study our customer already had a very efficient grinding process using Meister’s first generation HPB (high performance bond) technology. They had 14 grinding machines performing finish contouring of 7 million parts per year. Their process had been working well for them, but they wanted to know if Meister had subsequently introduced additional technologies that could make their process even more economical and productive. The answer was “Yes!”

Meister worked with the customer to develop a customized solution based on our new HPL anti friction grinding wheels in combination with an improved hDD hybrid diamond dresser. The new wheel’s porous HPL antifriction bond can handle and release more material without sticking or loading up the wheel. It also helps reduce friction and heat generated as additional material is liberated. This made it possible to incorporate advanced ultra-tough CBN crystals into the wheel for even more aggressive cutting while prolonging sharpness and wheel life. The hDD diamond dressers were also upgraded with new, tougher diamond crystals.

These sharper antifriction grinding wheels knocked 2 seconds off a 15 second grind time, and parts per wheel increased from 70 thousand to 115 thousand. With this customized grinding solution, our customer could produce 500 thousand additional parts per year with the same equipment. That’s enough to avoid the need to purchase an additional CNC grinding machine!

There were many other systematic benefits resulting from the custom tailored solution. See our “CASE STUDY: HPL Technology for Cam Grinding” post for a complete overview of the process.