Among most existing grinding disciplines, it is centerless grinding that is most like an art to pull off. OD and ID grinding, and cylindrical grinding in general, is very straight forward – you have measures that distinctly hold a workpiece in place, utilizing an opposite direction to maximize the speed and efficiency with which a grinding wheel can machine your metal. Grinding, as per the BHE, is the fastest way to remove metal – but when you really want to go as fast as possible, the centerless grind is the way to go.
This type of grinding goes very differently. As per Today’s Machining World, instead of having your workpiece held against the grinding wheel through two points on each end of the workpiece, centerless grinding involves dropping a workpiece onto a workblade, with its center just barely over the centers of two adjacent wheels – one slowly revolving smaller regulating wheel, and a larger, hefty grinding wheel.
Centerless grinding isn’t great when you’re trying to profile a cylinder, with tapers, shoulders and all the bells and whistles. But when you want a reputed service like Minnesota Grinding to provide you with a perfectly rounded material to work with, then nothing – absolutely nothing – gets the work done line a proper centerless technique.
Not everyone can pull that off, however. So let’s consider exactly what manufacturers have to consider when attempting to perform a centerless operation.
How Centerless Works
The main principles of getting a proper centerless grind involve this:
1. Angling the workblade towards the regulating wheel,
2. Ensuring that the center of the workpiece is above the center of both opposing wheels, by about half of its diameter,
3. Choosing either a throughfeed grind or an infeed grind.
There are other little basics to watch out for, such as observing the correct and optimal workblade angle (steeper for smaller diameters and faster rounding action, more shallow for larger diameters, and about 30 degrees to begin with in general) and the all-time basic of requiring a grinding wheel to run up and do its thing for about a minute to ensure consistency in the motor’s performance.
However, if you make sure to find a manufacturer who specializes in perfected centerless grinds, you’ll have no problem getting the rounded cylinders you need for your own business.
