For brothers Josh and Joel Puklicz of Royce Ayr Cutting Tools, Cambridge, ON, a grinding seminar held April 8 and 9 in Woodbridge, ON, was an opportunity to get up to speed on new grinding technologies.
“We do a lot of grinder and with four grinders we have in the shop,” says Josh Puklicz. “We just purchased another one, a Walter grinder that is better built for round spiral tooling. We came today just to hear about what’s new in grinding and see what might help us in our shop.”
The event, held annually, was organized by Machine Tool Systems, a grinding machinery distributor, and one of its principles, United Grinding.
It included three concurrent tracks with presentations related to cylindrical grinding, tool grinding and surface and profile grinding.
John Manley, president of Machine Tool Systems, Toronto, says there is a growing trend toward the use of compact, but powerful machines and automation.
“The new Studer S11 cylindral grinder is just over a metre cube (1.8 m2) but it has a 500 mm diameter wheel and that’s almost as big as the wheels on our other models. The small footprint means it can be used in a production environment where you can place them side-by-side.”
On the automation side, United Grinding’s Helitronic Mini tool grinding machine is another small footprint model with five axis technology for grinding of end mills, drills, step tools, profile blades and profile tools with diameters from 1 to 16 mm (0.04 to 0.63 in.).
“Tool grinding has gone completely automated; almost every tool grinder we import to Canada now has automation on it,” says Manley.
