Reducing costs, producing superior surface finishes and providing high flexibility are just a few of the advantages achieved with cylindrical
grinding in mold manufacturing.
When we talk about the moldmaking industry, we're addressing a very large
spectrum of applications.The high-volume automotive market aside, we can
examine the lower-volume, highly precise molds for medical components,
molds for the food and beverage industry, cosmetics and more.
In the food and beverage industry it's common for molds to have many radii,
which necessitate blending and raises the issue of surface finish and polishing.
One of the serious aspects moldmakers in this segment are concerned with is
ruinimizing polishing. From the grinding standpoint, features must be ground to
enhance surface finishes in an attempt to reduce the polishing burden-sometimes
even eliminating it.
A typical method to do this is by using multiple steps. Using a roughing wheel
and a finishing wheel, you rough out the part and then you finish it with a
finishing wheel that has a finer grit, removes less stock, with the result of
a better finish.
Another combination of steps is prehard turning followed by finish grinding.
Here, some of the cavity material can be removed with the boring tool or a turn-
ing insert and then finished by finish grinding.
So it's entirely possible to have a variety of multi-step processes going on
in a single fixturing, in a single cylindrical grinding machine.