Learn how Meister Abrasives’ proprietary High Performance Lubrication (HPL) Grinding Wheels produce better quality parts, faster, and with less burning, while at the same time improving wheel life and reducing abrasive cost per part.
When grinding today’s most complex parts and toughest alloys without proper coolant and lubricity, serious problems arise. Burning and subsurface damage of parts may run undetected, resulting in high levels of scrap. Likewise, metal pickup on the surface of the grinding wheel can damage both the wheel and the parts. For reliable productivity with heavy stock removal and tough materials, manufacturers need the right grinding technology to manage heat correctly.
The coolant conundrum
During internal grinding, especially deep within a part, coolant flows become more difficult to direct and less likely to reach the grind effectively and can cause burn. At inappropriately high cutting speeds, grinding can also burn parts and leave them unusable. Furthermore, inadequate coolant application also produces these failures and can stem from many causes, including poor coolant volume, less-than-optimal nozzle design, incorrect flow direction, or coolant that lacks the lubricity, cleanliness, or temperature control to perform its job. Under these conditions, grinding machines simply cannot produce reliable results, and the production problems show up during Quality Control (QC) testing in the form of subsurface damage. These scrapped parts quickly diminish a manufacturer’s profitability.
The pickup problem
At the same time that improper coolant or lubricity can burn workpieces, it can also cause softened workpiece material to weld directly onto the grinding wheel. This is known as metal pickup. As a result, friction rises and the tool quickly becomes useless without maintenance dressing. If an operator fails to detect this form of wheel damage in time, especially on an automated production line, a machine can continue making parts that are doomed to fail QC. Especially in high-production applications, this situation curtails productivity dramatically.
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The High Performance Lubrication (HPL) solution
Meister Abrasives’ R&D originally created High Performance Lubrication (HPL) to solve these types of problems for a customer with a power steering product that had eluded attempts to find an ideal grinding solution. Committed to helping the customer overcome these problems, Meister Abrasives designed an extension to its popular High Performance Bond (HPB) system to provide intrinsic lubricating properties in a specially formulated vitrified bond. Added lubricity means less friction and heat, of course, and this Meister Abrasives’ development enabled the customer to grind at higher speeds, achieve outstanding grinding performance, and keep its grinding wheels free of metal pickup.
the HPL bond system
An extraordinary bond
HPL’s additional lubricity comes from the intrinsic properties of the vitrified bond itself, not from any additive, and enables Meister Abrasives to increase the percentage of high-performance CBN in the grinding wheel to levels that might otherwise cause problems in a conventional vitrified bond system. This results in the ability to increase feeds and speeds while also eliminating damaging heat and metal pickup. Wheel life is also extended, reducing abrasive cost per part, and eliminating excessive dressing while improving part-surface quality. At higher speeds, these wheels save 10%-20% of cycle time and eliminate the risk of workpiece burn, which quickly spells the difference between average and outstanding productivity.
Target applications
HPL works wonders in heat-sensitive applications that benefit from its technology, such as parts that require heavy stock removal, utilize difficult-to-grind materials, or have grinding surfaces that are not easily reached by the coolant system.
Here are just a few examples of where this technology excels. Aerospace applications – especially superalloys, whose long, stringy chips can clog grinding wheels – make ideal candidates for Meister Abrasives’ HPL technology. Automotive parts such as crankshafts, camshafts, bearings, and power steering components are also good targets. Electric vehicles (EV) and e-Mobility parts fall in this category as well, especially drive shaft inner and outer surfaces. For cutting tool manufacturers, HPL shines in the production of punches and knives, complex parts that take longer to grind from very hard steels. Machine tool OEMs also can take advantage of HPL in grinding components such as linear guideways.
Broad availability
Like all Meister Abrasives’ products, HPL grinding wheels are completely customizable and available in a broad range of internal and external shapes and sizes, all with comparable lead times to our standard products. We manufacture these wheels in both the U.S. and Europe to make the product optimally available to all our customers.
When you look for excellence in grinding solutions, look for a company that centers its research, development, and production efforts around the needs of its customers. Meister Abrasives partners with you to help you make ideal grinding results part of your daily production. Our HPL grinding wheels can transform troublesome applications into routine success stories.
