Peter Wolters non-contact grinding wheel measurement system

The unit is also said to reduce dressing cycles by 70% and is available for Peter Wolters' line of double-disc grinding machine tools, including the DDG450 and DDG600 models. Grinding processes with conventional grinding wheels not only result in the desired abrasion of the work pieces, but also cause wear on the grinding wheels themselves. In order to keep the thickness tolerance of the work pieces constant, wear on the grinding wheels needs to be compensated for, which is typically achieved by a post-process measurement of the work pieces. This established measurement process, however, only provides information about the wear of both grinding wheels in total. The real wear on each grinding wheel depends on many factors; for example, the condition of the raw parts. Furthermore, the wear rate is constant during a machining cycle in only a very few cases; therefore, with post-process measurement only, it is often necessary to interrupt the grinding process and dress the grinding wheels, which leads to high production losses and additional costs. The non contact system measures the wheel surface during the grinding process itself, even for work pieces with a thickness down to 2 mm, and automatically corrects for any wheel wear. A feature of the patent-pending system is the no contact scanning of the grinding wheel surface at peripheral speeds of 30 m/s, without being affected by coolants, chips and abrasives in the machining environment. Even under these conditions, a stable measurement of the grinding wheel position with an accuracy of 5 µm can be achieved.