High stock removal

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High stock removal is a technological process with the goal of removing large amounts of material. The quantity of material which can be removed by a specific process depends on the material properties and the machining tool used.

Contents

Materials

The stock removal rate is largely a function of the material's properties. This is expressed as the machinability of a material: the ease or difficulty of machining a particular material. The machinability of materials varies greatly; for instance, aluminium and magnesium have high machinability compared to titanium and other special metals.

Specific energy

One way of quantifying the machinability of a material is to measure specific energy (e): this is the amount of energy required to cut a given volume of work material (kWh/mm3), and varies with material properties.

New materials

New materials are continuously developed to address the extreme demands of market segments such as petrochemical and aerospace. Metallurgical advances have produced a wide range of high-performance materials (e.g. titanium and high-nickel alloys), but a consequence of their attractive properties is often that they are difficult to machine.

Temperature rising

The specific cutting energy needed for ‘difficult to machine’ materials can be extremely high. Especially in high stock removal applications, there are problems with thermal load in the work material. An increase of the work material temperature can lead to deterioration of the work material surface integrity, resulting in metallurgical damages like micro-cracks, residual stresses and work hardening. Excessive heat also dramatically shortens tool life.

High stock removal machine tools

Productivity High stock removal productivity.jpg
Productivity

The energy required to remove large amounts of material depends on the properties of the working material (specific energy) as well as the technological process used.

Technologies

Several technologies are capable of removing substantial amounts of material. Among them are: sawing, turning, broaching, milling and grinding. Turning and milling are the most popular machining technologies; turning is mainly used for round products (though a specialized variant called whirling can modulate the turning axis to produce non-round shapes), whereas milling has a broad range of applications. Certain ‘difficult to machine’ materials like titanium, stainless steels, and exotic high-nickel alloys can be challenging to process when high stock removal is the goal, due to local heat generation at the cutting edge and the difficulty in removing it. These challenges can be mitigated, however, by strategies such as high-volume flood coolant, specialized cutting tool geometries, optimized speed and feed settings, and tool coatings like AlTiCN which tend to divert heat into the chip, away from the cutting tool.

Grinding

Traditionally bonded abrasives are used for stock removal. To remove substantial amounts of material in a grinding process, vertical segment grinders are used. These machines work with a rotating disc with abrasive segments, against which the work material is pressed with the aid of a rotating or reciprocating table. These technologies require significantly greater power than other grinding methods, up to 450 hp (340 kW). Some major manufactures of these machines are Blanchard, Mattison, Göckel and Reform.

Belt grinding

Cool cutting process Coolgrinding.jpg
Cool cutting process

Grinding with coated abrasives has recently become a viable alternative for high stock removal through developments in machine tool and grinding belt technology.

Belt grinding with coated abrasives can be an attractive process because the large surface area of the recirculating belt tends to carry away heat and prevent local hot spots. The productivity of this technology is, in many cases, three times that of rotary or reciprocating vertical grinders. [1] As a result, belt grinding is replacing traditional grinding technologies in the field of the specialty metal processing. [2]

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Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals in order to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term, it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale: from huge ships, buildings, and bridges, down to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Machinist</span> Technician

A machinist is a tradesperson or trained professional who operates machine tools, and has the ability to set up tools such as milling machines, grinders, lathes, and drilling machines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Machining</span> Material-removal process; manufacturing process

Machining is a manufacturing process where a desired shape or part is created using the controlled removal of material, most often metal, from a larger piece of raw material by cutting. Machining is a form of subtractive manufacturing, which utilizes machine tools, in contrast to additive manufacturing, which uses controlled addition of material.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grinding machine</span> Machine tool used for grinding

A grinding machine, often shortened to grinder, is a power tool used for grinding. It is a type of machining using an abrasive wheel as the cutting tool. Each grain of abrasive on the wheel's surface cuts a small chip from the workpiece via shear deformation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angle grinder</span> Handheld power tool for cutting or polishing

An angle grinder, also known as a side grinder or disc grinder, is a handheld power tool used for grinding and polishing. Although developed originally as tools for rigid abrasive discs, the availability of an interchangeable power source has encouraged their use with a wide variety of cutters and attachments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grinding wheel</span> Abrasive cutting tool for grinders

Grinding wheels are wheels that contain abrasive compounds for grinding and abrasive machining operations. Such wheels are also used in grinding machines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turning</span> Machining process

Turning is a machining process in which a cutting tool, typically a non-rotary tool bit, describes a helix toolpath by moving more or less linearly while the workpiece rotates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belt sander</span> Power tool

A belt sander or strip sander is a sander used in shaping and finishing wood and other materials. It consists of an electric motor that turns a pair of drums on which a continuous loop of sandpaper is mounted. Belt sanders may be handheld and moved over the material, or stationary (fixed), where the material is moved to the sanding belt. Stationary belt sanders are sometimes mounted on a work bench, in which case they are called bench sanders. Stationary belt sanders are often combined with a disc sander.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Knife making</span> Process of manufacturing a knife

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burr (edge)</span> Piece of material left on a workpiece after some operation

A burr is a raised edge or small piece of material that remains attached to a workpiece after a modification process. It is usually an unwanted piece of material and is removed with a deburring tool in a process called deburring. Burrs are most commonly created by machining operations, such as grinding, drilling, milling, engraving or turning. It may be present in the form of a fine wire on the edge of a freshly sharpened tool or as a raised portion of a surface; this type of burr is commonly formed when a hammer strikes a surface. Deburring accounts for a significant portion of manufacturing costs.

Belt grinding is an abrasive machining process used on metals and other materials. It is typically used as a finishing process in industry. A belt, coated in abrasive material, is run over the surface to be processed in order to remove material or produce the desired finish.

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Machinability is the ease with which a metal can be cut (machined) permitting the removal of the material with a satisfactory finish at low cost. Materials with good machinability require little power to cut, can be cut quickly, easily obtain a good finish, and do not cause significant wear on the tooling. Factors that typically improve a material's performance often degrade its machinability, presenting a significant engineering challenge.

Abrasive machining is a machining process where material is removed from a workpiece using a multitude of small abrasive particles. Common examples include grinding, honing, and polishing. Abrasive processes are usually expensive, but capable of tighter tolerances and better surface finish than other machining processes

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grinding (abrasive cutting)</span> Machining process using a grinding wheel

Grinding is a type of abrasive machining process which uses a grinding wheel as cutting tool.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honing (metalworking)</span> Production of a precise surface on a metal workpiece

Honing is an abrasive machining process that produces a precision surface on a metal workpiece by scrubbing an abrasive grinding stone or grinding wheel against it along a controlled path. Honing is primarily used to improve the geometric form of a surface, but can also improve the surface finish.

Electrochemical grinding is a process that removes electrically conductive material by grinding with a negatively charged abrasive grinding wheel, an electrolyte fluid, and a positively charged workpiece. Materials removed from the workpiece stay in the electrolyte fluid. Electrochemical grinding is similar to electrochemical machining but uses a wheel instead of a tool shaped like the contour of the workpiece.

Surface grinding is done on flat surfaces to produce a smooth finish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flat honing</span> Metalworking grinding process

Flat honing is a metalworking grinding process used to provide high quality flat surfaces. It combines the speed of grinding or honing with the precision of lapping. It has also been known under the terms high speed lapping and high precision grinding.

Grinding wheel wear is an important measured factor of grinding in the manufacturing process of engineered parts and tools. Grinding involves the removal process of material and modifying the surface of a workpiece to some desired finish which might otherwise be unachievable through conventional machining processes. The grinding process itself has been compared to machining operations which employ multipoint cutting tools. The abrasive grains which make up the entire geometry of wheel act as independent small cutting tools. The quality, characteristics, and rate of grinding wheel wear can be affected by contributions of the characteristics of the material of the workpiece, the temperature increase of the workpiece, and the rate of wear of the grinding wheel itself. Moderate wear rate allows for more consistent material size. Maintaining stable grinding forces is preferred rather than high wheel wear rate which can decrease the effectiveness of material removal from the workpiece.

References

  1. "Grinding Machine: Definition, Uses, Types, and Applications". www.xometry.com. Retrieved 2024-08-08.
  2. "Principle of belt grinding process".