Cutting downtime: General Industry Coverage

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END USER: Tivoly Inc., (802) 873-6003, www.tivoly.com. CHALLENGE: Significantly reduce downtime on a flute grinding machine. SOLUTION: Rebuild the flute grinder. SOLUTION PROVIDER: International Tool Machines (ITM), (386) 446-0500, www.itmfl.com

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Tivoly Inc. manufactures private-market HSS taps and reamers, which means it doesn’t sell directly to end users.

Making taps and reamers is challenging compared to producing other cutting tools, according to Scott Gowdy, Tivoly’s plant manager. “Grinding spiral flutes is especially difficult compared to straight flutes because you are dealing with complex wheel forms and multiple angles,” he said. “There’s a lot of different engineering that goes into the flute design and the wheel form.

“You are grinding at an odd angle,” he continued. “You can get wheel deflection or washout to the back or front. Because you are grinding at an angle, you have forces directed across various angles of the wheel.” Washout occurs when unintentionally grinding outside the parameters of the wheel form.

Courtesy of Tivoly

Tivoly’s flute grinder needed to have its entire electrical system replaced.

Located in Derby Line, Vt., Tivoly has 160 employees and 240 machine tools, ranging from lathes and milling machines to virtually every conceivable type of grinder. After 15 years, one of those machine tools, a flute grinding machine from International Tool Machines, succumbed to wear and tear. Tivoly contacted ITM to rebuild the machine last fall. ITM builds CNC grinding machines for the cutting tool, medical instrument, aerospace and automotive markets.