Get your parts from a great precision plate!
Why still grind or mill your precision parts to thickness piece by piece? Get your parts out of a large plate using flat grinding and precision grinding! A rough plate has many challenges. Difference in thickness, tension and unevenness. The new precision grinding machine at Van Geenen deals with these, realizing accurate values in terms of parallelism, flatness, and thickness.
When manufacturing sheet metal, a lot of stress is introduced into the material. During the initial machining steps, this tension is released and can produce a reaction once the vacuum tension is released. By turning the sheet regularly and grinding on two sides, most of the tension leaves the material and can be worked toward a flat sheet.
Nowadays, titanium is indispensable in the Aerospace industry. The many attractive properties of titanium make it a very popular material. For example, it has a very interesting strength-to-weight ratio, or very strong and tremendously light. Very high corrosion resistance, and performance at high and low temperatures. Not surprisingly, it is widely used in the Aerospace industry. For example, Titanium / titanium is used in the airframe, jet engines and landing gear of aircraft. Not to mention, much of the engines are made of titanium. The jet engines are naturally exposed to temperatures well below zero high in the air, while in engines the temperatures can be high. The titanium knows how to handle that well and continues to perform as it should.
The parts such as the engine blades, shafts, discs, suspensions, etc., must of course be precisely machined. Such as titanium plates, which need to be ground to size. Van Geenen now has the experience to grind these flat within precise tolerances.
Titanium is not the easiest material to grind. Most Titanium has a very hard rolling skin. This is also known as Alpha Case. This is the surface structure that occurs when titanium is produced, once it is exposed to oxygen (oxygen-enriched surface). This surface layer is very hard and brittle, and exhibits micro-cracks. This reduces the very attractive properties of the titanium.
It is less strong and reliable. This is obviously undesirable when it comes to aircraft parts. Clean grinding or flat grinding of Titanium are good solutions for this.
The titanium plate must first be stripped of this mill skin. Due to the very tough hard skin, a substantial grinding machine is required. Van Geenen has this equipment to gradually remove layers of material from the titanium plate. Quite deep grinding is required to remove the Alpha Case.
Thickness, parallelism and flatness are terms that say something about the accuracy of the plate. What is the upper limit, lower limit, and how are the different terms related and how do they differ. When it comes to precision grinding of plate, these terms come up.
The distance between two surfaces of a plate, top and bottom. The thickness on drawing is usually shown with a specified deviation tolerance. For example 8mm + 0 / -0.05mm This means that the plate should not be thicker than 8.00mm and not thinner than 7.95mm.
In raw material there can be very large differences in thickness. This depends on the material type, rolling process and thickness. By grinding the sheet flat on one or both sides, one can minimize deviations in thickness. One can bring the stainless steel or aluminum plate, or any other type of material within the desired tolerance by flat grinding. This also creates a bridge to parallelism.
Parallelism of a metal sheet, such as stainless steel aluminum or titanium, is very much related to thickness. Parallelism, also called parallelism, indicates the difference between the thinnest and thickest points of a plate. So if the thickest point of the sheet is 7.99mm, and the thinnest is 7.96mm, we are talking about a parallelism of 0.03mm. Flat grinding / precision grinding of both sides can greatly improve parallelism. For many applications, it is especially important that the sheet ev
Flatness, of course, like thickness tolerance and parallelism, is often a drawing requirement. But flatness of a plate is not directly related to this. For flatness is measured relative to a reference point or also called zero point. This is often the flat table of the grinding machine, or a flat, granite table in a measuring room. But, regularly it is also exposed differently. That flatness is measured when the plate is stretched on the grinding table, by vacuum or a magnet. This suffices when the plate is later bolted, clamped or welded in the application. Flatness remains a challenging issue. So it can be influenced by precision grinding, by grinding 2 sides, and turning regularly in between leaves a lot of tension the material. But not always. In some cases it may be necessary to anneal and align materials with low stress, positively affecting flatness.
Cylindrical grinding is also a precision grinding operation, but a completely different branch of sport. Shafts, rings, bores, can be precision ground both internally and externally. Cylindrical grinding is a specialized technique. This can be ground in a fixture, but also by means of centerless grinding.
Looking for someone for plate surface grinding and precision grinding? Then contact us directly. We stand for a perfect finish, high quality and an end result that meets all your requirements. You can reach us at telephone number +31 (0)548 - 543793, or send an e-mail to info@van-geenen.com.
