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Grinders fulfill shop's business strategy

April 1, 2005
In the midst of failing job shops, Venture Grinding Inc. survives by concentrating on small, complicated jobs and giving customers a good price and quick deliveries. Such a business strategy requires flexible and reliable machines, which is why this Walto

According to Dale Stebner, co-owner of Venture Grinding, the shop's Studer machines, such as this S31 cnc, make for easy changeovers, setups, and training.

For grinding worm gears and toolholders, Venture Grinding's S31 cnc performs several operations in one chucking and accurately holds part-feature tolerances in relation to one another.

In the midst of failing job shops, Venture Grinding Inc. survives by concentrating on small, complicated jobs and giving customers a good price and quick deliveries. Such a business strategy requires flexible and reliable machines, which is why this Walton Hills, Ohio, grinding shop relies on Studer grinders from United Grinding Technologies.

Venture has an S21 cnc, an S36 cnc, and an S31 cnc with full B-axis for combining several operations in a single chucking. "Because of the flexibility of these machines, we can run jobs as small as two pieces up to lots of as much as 10,000," says Joe Scolaro, co-owner of Venture.

"Studer Pictogramming and the Quick-Set programming feature, which lets us rotate the B axis and maintain the relationship between wheels and parts, make changeover, setup, and training easy," adds Dale Stebner, co-owner of Venture Grinding.

Two jobs the shop runs on its S31 cnc are worm gears and toolholders. Gears measure 1.250 in. in diameter and 6.0-in. long and have thread-ground centers and journals that must be held to 0.0004 in. The S31 cnc grinds both the I.D.s and O.D.s in one chucking.

"This ensures superior concentricity and better gear-box performance than does grinding gears conventionally," says Scolaro. "Generally, we work with tolerances in the 0.0002 to 0.0003-in. range for diameters. And we must hold these consistently and repeatably."

For the different types and configurations of toolholders it grinds, Venture must maintain the critical relationships between O.D.s and I.D. tapers. To do this, the shop clamps on specific parts of the O.D.s, grinds them, indexes the I.D. wheel, and then grinds I.D. tapers.

According to Scolaro, grinding these toolholders is critical because they are used in rotating applications. Concentricities are tight and unachievable with previous traditional methods using multiple fixturings and part handlings.

"Prior to CNC, conventional wisdom dictated running small quantities on manual grinders because they were easy to set up, changeover, and run. Today, though, we can program and run a part faster on our Studers than we ever could on a manual machine," comments Scolaro.

United Grinding Technologies
Miamisburg, Oh.
grinding.com