Designs on cost-savings: Design & Engineering

A PROFIMAT MC 607 5-axis CNC grinding machine manufactured by Blohm Jung GmbH in Germany has been supplied in close cooperation with UK agent, J.R.A. Bennett Ltd, at The University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Center (AMRC) with Boeing. It follows a rigorous tender process that involved evaluating hundreds of parameters and included grinding trials at the machine builder’s factory in Hamburg.

A PROFIMAT MC 607 5-axis CNC grinding machine manufactured by Blohm Jung GmbH in Germany has been supplied to The University of Sheffield AMRC with Boeing.

The moving-column grinding machine is located within the Design, Prototyping and Testing Center, a major expansion of the original AMRC building within the Advanced Manufacturing Park, which is supported by the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and the European Regional Development Fund. The center concentrates on the development of high-value manufacturing technologies mainly for the aerospace, Formula One and high-end automotive sectors.

Medical applications will also be developed, as earlier this year a new facility was set up within the center, called Medical AMRC, to concentrate specifically on this industry. One application will be to investigate finish grinding of prosthetics that have been 3D-printed layer-by-layer from cobalt-chrome powder. Knee joints will be a particular target due to their multiple profiled planes.

Capable of producing highly complex components, the BLOHM PROFIMAT MC is ideal for supporting the center’s aim of looking at how the design process can reduce manufacturing costs long term, particularly by combining different technologies. A highly capable machine is desirable for such an endeavor. The PROFIMAT has features in abundance to assist in research and development programs and in evaluating wheel consumption against metal removal for achieving different levels of accuracy and surface finish.

The latest Siemens Solution line 840D control, which includes a BLOHM user interface, can be used to program the machine’s five CNC axes to interpolate simultaneously.

Complicated surfaces may be generated in this way, without using profiled wheels. Alternatively, one or both of the rotary axes on the table can be clamped while the others move simultaneously, a strategy that allows the number of separate machining operations for producing a component to be reduced, often to one. The result is a reduction in manufacturing cost and an increase in accuracy through less tolerance build-up.

All wheel-dressing options are available on the machine, including continuous, pulse and table dressing, as well as contour generation of grinding wheel profiles. If one of the in-process methods is chosen, one of two diamond dressing rolls can be selected under program control from an overhead, swiveling unit.