Reishauer conducts gear grinding seminar in Nanjing

Delegates from GETRAG (Jiangxi) Transmission Co., Ltd. attended the seminar and discussed gear grinding technologies and learned how to better improve production efficiency with the tool solutions from Reishauer.

The history of Reishauer goes back more than 200 years. It is now a leader in designing and building highly precise and productive manufacturing systems, mostly used in the gear manufacturing industry. In 2010, it acquired Felsomat, a German company found in 1981 and has developed from being an automation specialist to a complete systems integrator. Felsomat remains an independent brand under the Reishauer Group.

“Reishauer provides integrated gear manufacturing solutions with its machines, electro-plated diamond and CBN tools and clamping fixtures. After the acquisition of Felsomat Group, Reishauer has strengthened its technological competence and leading position in gear manufacturing. Now, we can provide turn-key solutions for our customers with the addition of Felsomat’s turning and hobbing machines that can be used for soft machining, the so-called green machining, before heat treatment of gear blanks,” said Raphael Goldammer, Head of Sales and Engineering of Reishauer’ Tooling Division.

In its 200 years history of evolution, Reishauer has never ceased its pursuit of innovation and technological development. The company spends 5% of its annual net sales on research and development each year (i.e. CHF 18 millions), 82% of which is on machines, 16% on real estate and 2% on IT, as revealed by Mr. Goldammer. Currently, Reishauer’s consolidated net sales totals CHF 360 million, which is split evenly among Europe (32%), Americas (35%) and Asia (33%).

Mr. Goldammer said that the customer’s rising demands regarding product quality, costs per piece, process responsibility, flexibility and short-term availability of commodities are presenting completely new challenges for a traditional machine manufacturer. “This has been a driving force for the growth of Reishauser, which has developed into a system supplier and now provides the complete tooling to its own process, which then benefits our customers,” said Mr. Goldammer.

During the seminar, Mr Goldammer shared information on Reishauer’s Tooling Division and also gave detailed presentations on diamond dressing tools, clamping fixtures, grind worms, diamond honing masters, CBN tools and design software.

For example, he emphasized Reishauer’s highly precise diamond dressing tools, which provide the most economic tooling concept (there are 15 altogether) for each application and machine setup and special diamond finish for maximum tool life and repeatable cutting processes. Design of the tools is also simulated and geometrically optimized to ensure quality and reliability, he said.

Nowadays, in high-output, large-volume production, tool change-over time is becoming increasingly crucial to improving productivity and lead time. The design of tool fixtures is quite challenging as it has to fit as more tools as possible so as to minimize the change-over times, noted Mr. Goldammer. Reishauser’s clamping systems, he said, provide the shortest set-up times (less than 5 minutes), and ensure quick and precise change-over (less than 5μm run-out).

To conclude the seminar, Mr. Goldammer identified some errors that customers usually would meet in grinding. He said that there are 6 possible sources of errors, which are pre-machining quality, inadequate clamping accuracy/stability, dressing of grinding worm, adverse meshing process conditions, wrong grinding parameters and deviations in the machine axes. For each of these sources of errors, he analyzed the causes and offered corrective actions.