MICRO MACHINING | CASE STUDY
<< Figure 1: The grinding shop traditionally has been one of the core areas of Blum's Equipment Manufacturing Department. All images courtesy of Blum. >>
The Equipment Manufacturing Department is located at the central town Höchst and has been structured in a classical and function-oriented manner. Based on well-structured and detailed working schedules, a high degree of craftsmen's expertise could be combined with highly automated industrial manufacturing. The grinding shop which traditionally has been one of Blum's core areas has a full order book and all employees are working to full capacity. Besides cylindrical grinding and jig grinding, surface, profile and continuous path grinding processes are performed. Ralf Hildebrand, the foreman of the grinding shop, recalls the first Amada Meister G3 which was purchased in 2008: “It was the ideal complement for our new concept because it can be used for complete machining.” Due to its universal capabilities in combining surface, profile and continuous path grinding processes, the Amada can replace two conventional grinding machines, without any comprise in terms of precision. Hildebrand: “Soon, we recognised the potential of this machine.” For instance, Blum is using the Amada machine to produce a part —a profiled end stop —that previously has been manufactured by a process other than grinding. “For us, this created new ideas for the optimisation of operating sequences with new resulting challenges.”
<< Figure 3: Today, Blum is using the Amada
machine to produce parts that previously could not be manufactured by grinding. >>
>> Continued on page 26
SPT Roth Ltd 3250 Lyss, Switzerland T +41 32 387 80 80
cim-ch@spt.net
>>
www.spt.net/cim
Small Precision Tools Inc. Petaluma, CA 94954, USA T +1 707 765 4545
cim-usa@spt.net
25 | commercial micro manufacturing international Vol 6 No.6
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