Schleifen + Polieren, 1/2023

Deburring, grinding, sharpening, gear cutting and polishing are core competencies of the Berger Gruppe. At the GrindTec 2023 in Leipzig, the Wuppertal-based group of companies will present solutions for machining machine knives with robot technology and intelligent feed systems.

In the manufacture of machine knives, the most precise workpiece tolerances must be maintained in order to be able to guarantee good quality of the end product. Measuring systems in conjunction with robot technology are playing an increasingly important role in grinding processes.

At the GrindTec in Leipzig, the Berger Gruppe will present various CNC-controlled grinding machines that process machine and/or circular knives in different grinding processes. Here, a surface grinding, an arc grinding as well as a serrated grinding can be achieved on the workpiece.

CNC grinding machines grind, deburr, polish and serrate both individual workpieces and steel strips. Integrated camera or laser measuring systems enable the most precise tolerance values to be maintained.
Workpiece feeding as well as loading and unloading of the processing machine can be automated. Often the grinding machine is combined with a robot-controlled feeding system. The workpiece is either taken from a magazine by robots or fed as bulk material on a conveyor belt.

Workpieces supplied as bulk material are separated via vibrators. A 2D camera recognition system detects the orientation and position of the individual part so that it can be picked up correctly by the robot. The workpiece is then positioned in the grinding machine by robots and, after processing, deposited in another magazine.

New at the GrindTec 2023

The new generation of the RFS/RT/NT peripheral grinding machine will be presented for the first time at GrindTec 2023.

The grinding machine achieves surface and/or chamfer grinding on circular knives, saw blades and circular blanks using the pendulum or plunge-cut method. Thanks to an additional grinding axis, subsequent grinding operations can be performed in a single clamping operation. For example, the surface of the workpiece can be ground flat and a bevel can be applied to the cutting edge in one work cycle. The circular blade is held in the rotating workpiece holder by mechanical clamping devices, permanent magnets or electromagnets.

The workpiece fixture is mounted on a rotary table that can be continuously adjusted from -10° to 60° so that a wider range of bevels can be machined onto the circular knife.

After each dressing cycle, the travels are automatically compensated and adjusted to the pre-set peripheral speed.

The workpiece and grinding wheel are changed fully automatically via a handling robot. The robot can be equipped with a specially designed dual gripper so that it can pick up both the circular blade and the grinding wheel.

Thanks to robot automation, the set-up or changeover time is reduced from 30 minutes for manual loading and unloading to 3 minutes.

The processing machine can be equipped with sensors and thus becomes a data supplier. This includes operating states as well as status and process information. Measured values are recorded by intelligent sensors and passed on to the machine controller via IO-Link. This communicates with a decentralized higher-level control system. Here, decisions can be made to optimize productivity and the use of resources as well as an evaluation of the process.