HNC and Rollertech devise low cost rubber roll grinder

Carl Slingsby, Rollertech’s managing director, approached Mike Diskin of HNC advising him that he had bought a lathe and wanted it converting into a grinding machine. Rollertech services the worlds rubber roll industry, and a visit to a German customer that expressed a need for a roll grinder for its smaller volume batches but couldn’t justify spending a large sum of money on a ‘production machine’. Mr Slingsby had already considered the idea of using precision metalcutting lathe with a grinding head fitted to the rear slide, but had found none on the market, hence the approach to HNC. HNC took on the project. As the German customer needed to produce cambered rolls, a PLC and DRO would be integrated into the machine electrics, with the PLC programmed to produce cambers, tapers along with concave and convex shapes. This becomes feasible by diverting the feedback from the linear scale to the PLC. Featuring a 350 mm diameter by 63 mm wide carbide wheel, HNC’s design of the grinding unit was “passed off” and a prototype produced. An extensive test programme followed without any modifications necessary and was fitted to the machine. In tandem, an Omron PLC unit was sourced, programmed and integrated with the DRO system/machine electrics. Other than developing a “low cost” grinding solution, the German based customer's only other remit was to grind rolls up to 3,000 mm in length by 380 mm diameter and retain the lathe’s original front mounted toolpost for metalcutting operations, both supported by the grinding head and lathe solution. So successful has the machine been that the German customer is now expected to take a second unit.