Welcome to Royal Master Grinders Booth N-6646 at the IMTS 2010. It is with great anticipation for all of us that we are meeting here in Chicago to see the latest developments in Manufacturing Technologies.
Royal Master Grinders is presenting many new developments in Centerless Grinding capabilities. We have a brand new line of grinders called "BEDROCK SERIES." We have machines on the floor with wheels spinning and coolant flowing and parts grinding. There is an Accessories Station with our Take Apart Machine. Our Engineering Station can bring you virtually every design imaginable for loading and grinding your new parts.
As you approach our booth from any direction, you will find us just left of center in the North Building top floor. Our Diamond Plate floor sets us apart from others with an image of real grinders in the real world. Here on this floor, we will "Talk the talk" and "Walk the walk."
Let's walk through the booth together and I will show you what we have brought for you to see.
Starting at the right front corner is a glass display case with sample parts. On top of the case is a monitor running continuous videos of our grinders in action. From this location, you can see six machines, our Engineering Station called Arnold's World and a hospitality station to sit and discuss what it is that brought you here.
Bedrock Series
Walking around this case to the right is the Predominate BEDROCK SERIES High Accuracy Grinder with CNC Wheel Dressing. The large machine base platform with 8" thick surface plate machine bed explains the name of this new line of Royal Master Grinders. Here we demonstrate CNC Wheel Dressing, CNC Ram Bed positioning, post process Laserlinc LOBEX™ lobing inspection and two way communication with the machine to a Supervisor computer station. The SBS™ dynamic wheel balancer is provided by Schmitt Industries. All of this grinding a very complicated part profile with an automatic part loader.
Hi-Accuracy
Continuing to the right along the same aisle we now stop in front of our traditional Model TG-12x4 High Accuracy Centerless Grinder. This machine has Air Sensing Single Point Diamond Wheel Dressers, CNC Ram Bed positioning, and a High Speed Cross Transfer part loader. Cycle times are fast and size is accurate and repeatable. Based on the reports generated and sent from the machine to the Supervisor computer station, this is true.
The "Jobber"
Now let's head back towards the front right corner where we started and look at "The Jobber Machine." The machine gets its name because it is equipped to be low cost and fully capable of most any grind application that comes its way. It is what you would see in a Centerless Grind Job Shop. This is our TG-12x4 with a Servo Cycle for ram bed positioning. This is convenient and accurate for both Thrufeed and Infeed grinding. We use a servo motor and ball screw to position the ram bed. The touch screen operator interface can recall infeed grind cycle parameters, make size adjustments, control part feeders, etc. The Mini-Mag Feeder is universal for many different part geometries. Here we use it to load a medium volume multi diameter valve spool. The operator receives the part after grinding on a "silver platter," literally.
Thrufeed Microsize
From here, we walk along the cross aisle to the Thrufeed Micro-Size grinder. This is our Model TG-12x4 set up to thrufeed grind a single diameter fluid control valve. Typically, this is a close tolerance grind requirement. To accomplish this but without bearing the higher cost of a CNC controlled grinder, we offer the Ball Screw and Micro Feed Sizing Dial feature with option for Glass Scale Encoder. This grinding package with an In-Line Vibratory Bowl Feeder and Exit Side Discharge Conveyor allows for a consistent flow of parts through a rigid grind station. When the need for a size adjustment arises, simply turn the micro-size thimble screw and the ram bed advances in the finest of increments. On this machine, we have a Schmitt Industries, Lasercheck™ surface roughness gauge.
Accessories
Behind the Thrufeed Micro-Size machine is the Take Apart Machine and Accessories Table. Here we have a "half built" machine with some "cut-away" components allowing you to see and touch some of the inner workings of our grinder. You can really get hands on and change the components, turn them upside down, make your own set-up, examine the new Regulating Wheel Servo Drive System or whatever sparks your curiosity. This is the only machine on the floor not under power and not grinding parts.
Gen X Micromachining
Turn the corner now and walk along the back aisle to see our Royal Master Model Gen X CNC Grinder. This machine is a departure from the traditional centerless grinder. It does not have a regulating wheel or standard work rest blade. In place of that, we use a work support and servo driven work head with collet. The combination of these components is more like a screw machine using a shaped grinding wheel in place of a turning insert. This machine is equipped with our CNC Wheel Dresser, CNC Ram Bed positioning and a CNC Linear Actuator for positioning the work head. This full function CNC grinder can receive a 3-D Solid Model part print, translate the file and convert to an EXCEL spreadsheet to create the program used by the wheel dresser and the multi-axis grinder to generate a part grind. All of this can be viewed on screen in Virtual Mode before any movement occurs. The process of this program conversion and translation is all done behind the scenes. Any involvement of the operator is intuitive and there are no G or M codes to be entered. Now that is user friendly!
Arnold's World
As we look back around the booth, we see that we have visited each of the grinders. What is in the center of the booth is what we call Arnold's World. This is definitely worth exploring. We have referred to Arnold as the "Man behind the curtain" because he seems to have some mystical powers. Here in Arnold's World we want you to see the Supervisor Computer Station connecting each of the grinders under power in our booth. With either network cable or internet connection to a PC or Smart Phone the two way communication between man and machine is made possible. The Supervisor computer can access the machines controller and operate each of the machine functions remotely. The computer can be equipped with software such as Microsoft ACCESS web database to generate an EXCEL spreadsheet and report machine status and results. This status reporting can be sent manually or automatically, perhaps hourly, using e-mail. By remote access, we mean to or from your shop floor desk, office computer, home computer or smart phone anywhere in the world.
Along with this Supervisor Computer Station in Arnold's World is an independent demonstration of our 3-D Solid Model conversion software to Machine Program. Here Arnold will load any part design in Solid Model format, convert to an EXCEL spreadsheet used for the Machine Program and instead of grinding the part, he will use the x-y axis interpolation to generate a two dimension part print on a plotter. Arnold will be busy.
Within Arnold's World is our Engineering Station computer. Here we have our large database of machine and feeder designs all in Solid Model format. We can work with you to preview what might work best to grind your part and build a virtual machine and loader.
Hospitality Station
After all of this virtual walking around, perhaps you would like to sit down at the hospitality station. Here we have some coffee or water and light snacks to enjoy while you rest your feet. You may want to just relax and visit for a while or you may want to tell us something about what is on your mind.
Our intention for your visit to our booth this year is to enlighten you to what Royal Master Grinders has been up to, to hear what you have been up to and hopefully find that we can get together to become more productive in centerless grinding.
For more information on this product and for an evaluation of how it might benefit your grind application, contact Royal Master Grinders at www.royalmaster.com.
