CNC Centerless Grinding of Higher Precision Medical Components

Glebar Company (Ramsey, NJ) provides innovative centerless and double disc grinding and gauging systems for manufacturing higher precision medical components, including medical guidewires (CAM.2, GT-9AC, TF-9DHD), dental components, catheters, asthma inhalers, arthroscopic shavers, CT scan pellets and bone drills (TF-9DHD, GT-610, GT-610 CNC, DD-7). Their GT-610 CNC centerless grinding system outperforms larger competing grinders that require a much larger footprint and grinding wheels so large and heavy, a crane is required to change them. It offers high horsepower, high rigidity and superior slide positioning. Through intelligent control and design, the G-ratios (part volume removed divided by wheel volume used) can exceed machines twice its size, all while maintaining better roundness, diameter, and taper tolerances. This centerless grinding system provides proven technology for grinding multiple parts per cycle on a 10 in or 12 in diameter grinding wheel.

The GT-610 CNC offers automatic CNC work wheel and regulating wheel dressing capabilities for high production, lights-out grinding. It can interface with an Advanced Analytics cloud-based system that allows operators and managers to remotely receive actionable real-time analytics on easy-to-read dashboards, reduce downtime, boost capacity and increase machine availability. Its patent-pending, controlled, motorized work rest blade slide adjusts (while grinding) for the lateral position of parts. Its Quick Change Gripper assembly enables rapid changeover from one set of part holding grippers to a different set (i.e., eight station to five station) – the entire gripper assembly is easily disconnected, lifted out of the keyed mount, and then dropped into the next mount and reconnected. The GT-610 CNC has offline wheel dressing options to further decrease downtime, is fully serviceable in the field, and has CE certification available. Other features include:

• A Twin Grip Spindle, ABEC 7 bearings and a super-high precision regulating wheel housing to maintain extremely tight tolerances.
• Variable frequency drive on the work wheel spindle for increased wheel surface feet when running superabrasives, such as vitrified CBN. Spindle rpm can be varied depending on the wheel type and wheel dressing parameters.
• Remote connectivity using fast EtherCAT® industrial Ethernet technology.
• Super high rigidity roller guides with 0.1 micron scale feedback on the ram, and a ram bed and CNC work wheel dresser.
• Ease of changeover and setup for short production runs: automatic wheel balancing and acoustic emissions system for ease of setup, an auto dress feature to set redress after grinding a set number of parts, a servo regulating wheel drive, 15 hp in small form factor and 10 minute to 15 minute wheel changes.
• Intuititive HMI touch screen operator interface and inline part diameter feedback to the control system allows the machine to correct the wheel dress profile for size variation by station.
• A Setup Reduction Metrology Device (P4K) scans and provides feedback of the entire component geometry for all parts in a cycle to automatically correct the grinding wheel dress shape (correcting the wheel dress shape from any measurement device is patent-pending).

Accessories include an electromagnetic testing method for nondestructive testing (NDT) that makes use of electromagnetic induction to detect and characterize surface and sub-surface flaws in conductive materials. A bowl feeder can be designed to part specifications and integrated with machine controls for custom feeding. A custom gantry pick and place system can be designed for positioning specific parts in the grind zone in one motion. A variety of custom-designed conveyors can move parts through the process seamlessly and quickly. An in-line diameter contact gauge can be mounted on exit side of the machine to measure the ground part at several points used for sizing.

Glebar Company, 565 East Crescent Avenue, Ramsey, NJ 07446, 201-337‐1500, Fax: 201-337‐6848, [email protected], www.glebar.com.