The present disclosure relates to cutting workpieces, more specifically to a grinding wheel cutting apparatus and method.
Master alloy is a refined material to be re-molten for casting, and is usually presented as a rod workpiece. Commonly used master alloys include superalloy master alloys, dual-phase steel master alloys, stainless steel master alloys and heat-resistant steel master alloys, etc. The master alloy is mainly used for casting, so the composition of the master alloy should be strictly controlled according to the practical requirements, and the weight of cut-off segment should be strictly controlled in the cutting process.
In the casting process of master alloy, when the molten master alloy is injected into a mold, the molten alloy contacting the surface of the mold will be cooled and solidified rapidly, as the temperature of the mold is lower than that of the molten alloy. Therefore in the solidification process, the molten alloy shrinks from the center to the outside, and a shrinkage cavity may be left in the center of the resulting master alloy rod. When a grinding wheel passes through the shrinkage cavity in the cutting process, a contamination is apt to happen, affecting the quality of the precision casting.
In the conventional method for cutting a master alloy rod workpiece, the master alloy rod workpiece is cut at a fixed length. However, even for the master alloy rod workpieces of the same specification, their outer diameters may have a variation of about ±2 mm after a grinding or skinning process for their outer surfaces. As a result, the fixed-length cutting may result in a weight error, which will in turn lead to waste of the master alloy material or insufficient shrinkage compensation of the cast piece. In addition, in the art, the cutting of metal materials always involve heavy labor, high pollution, frequent accidents and low degree of automation. Therefore, a more efficient and more precise cutting method is needed to solve the above problems.
An embodiment of the present disclosure provides a grinding wheel cutting apparatus comprising a first laser distance sensor, a master controller and a grinding wheel, wherein the first laser distance sensor is communicatively coupled to the master controller;
wherein the laser distance sensor is configured to obtain an outer diameter of a rod workpiece;
the master controller is configured to determine a segment length of a segment to be cut from the rod workpiece according to the outer diameter of the rod workpiece, a material density of the rod workpiece, and a preset segment weight of the rod workpiece segment;
the master controller is configured to perform a control to circularly cut the rod workpiece with the grinding wheel, according to the determined segment length.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the master controller comprises:
a workpiece parameter determination module configured to determine the material density of the rod workpiece and the segment weight according to a user instruction;
a data processing module configured to determine the segment length based on the outer diameter, the material density and the segment weight.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the master controller further comprises:
a memory configured to pre-store material densities of rod workpieces of different specifications;
an interaction module configured to receive a user instruction, which contains a specification of the rod workpiece selected by a user to cut, the segment weight and a reserved core diameter;
the workpiece parameter determination module is configured to determine the material density of the rod workpiece according to the specification of the rod workpiece selected by the user.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the grinding wheel cutting apparatus further comprises a second laser distance sensor configured to obtain a cut depth of the rod workpiece.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the master controller further comprises:
a compensation depth determination module configured to determine a wear compensation data for the grinding wheel based on the cut depth of the rod workpiece and a prescribed algorithm.
In an embodiment of the disclosure, the grinding wheel cutting apparatus further comprises an automatic feeder configured to convey a to-be-cut rod workpiece to the grinding wheel cutting apparatus and arranged in parallel to a conveying direction of the rod workpieces.
the automatic feeder comprises a swing arm 201, a rack platform 202 and a cylinder 203, the rack platform 203 is configured to store the rod workpieces, and the cylinder 203 is configured to control the swing arm 201 to feed the rod workpiece to the cutting apparatus for processing.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the swing arm 201 comprises an L-shaped stopper link 204 disposed on a side surface of the swing arm 201.
It is another aspect of the present disclosure to provide a rod workpiece cutting method for cutting a rod workpiece with the aforementioned grinding wheel cutting apparatus, the method comprising:
determining a material density of the rod workpiece and a segment weight of a segment to be cut off from the rod workpiece according to a user instruction;
obtaining an outer diameter of the rod workpiece;
determining a segment length of the segment based on the outer diameter, the material density and the segment weight; and
cutting the rod workpiece according to the determined segment length.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the method further comprises:
obtaining a cut depth of the rod workpiece; and
determining a compensation depth for the next cutting operation based on the cut depth and a prescribed compensation algorithm.
The grinding wheel cutting apparatus of the present disclosure provides a fixed-weight cutting, in which an outer diameter of a rod workpiece to be cut is measured by a laser distance sensor, and a segment length of the segment to be cut off from the rod workpiece is determined based on the measured outer diameter, material density of the rod workpiece and an expected weight of the segment, then the cutting operation of the cutting apparatus is controlled in a quantitative manner, in that the weight of each cut-out segment can be precisely controlled.
The above and additional objects, features and advantages of the present disclosure will be apparent from the following detailed descriptions of preferred embodiments in conjunction with the drawings.
For clear illustration of the embodiments in the present disclosure or the prior art, a brief description of the drawings for the embodiments or the prior art will be given below. Obviously, the drawings described below involve only some embodiments of this disclosure. For those of ordinary skilled in the art, other drawings can be derived from these drawings without any inventive efforts. In the drawings:
A clear and complete description of the embodiments of the present disclosure will be set forth with reference to the drawings. Obviously, the described embodiments are only a part, rather than all, of the embodiments of the present disclosure. All other embodiments derived by persons skilled in the art from the embodiments of the present disclosure without making inventive efforts shall fall within the scope of the present disclosure.
A complete description of the specific embodiments and the operation principle of the present disclosure will be set forth with reference to the accompanying specification and drawings. It should be appreciated that the scope of the present invention is not limited to this disclosure. Any improvements, modifications and alternations made by those skilled in the art without departing from the concepts and principles of this disclosure shall fall within the scope of the claims.
The features described and/or shown in an embodiment can be applied to one or more other embodiments in a same or similar manner, and can be combined with features in other embodiments or replace features in other embodiments.
The term “comprise” and “include” refer to the existence of a feature, part, step or member, and are not meant to exclude existence or addition of one or more other features, parts, steps or assemblies.
An embodiment of the present disclosure provides a grinding wheel cutting apparatus, which may comprise a first laser distance sensor, a master controller, and a grinding wheel, and the first laser distance sensor may be communicatively coupled to the master controller.
The laser distance sensor may be configured to obtain an outer diameter of a rod workpiece.
The master controller may be configured to determine a segment length of a segment to be cut off from the rod workpiece based on the outer diameter of the rod workpiece, a material density of the rod workpiece and a segment weight of the segment.
The master controller may be configured to perform a control to circularly cut the rod workpiece with the grinding wheel according to the segment length.
The cutting and blanking of a master alloy rod workpiece are determined according to a required material weight for the subsequent precision casting process or pulverizing process. The conventional method for cutting a master alloy rod workpiece is fixed-length cutting, in which a cut-off length is determined by taking the material density of the master alloy rod workpiece into account and assuming the outer diameter of the rod workpiece to be constant, and the master alloy rod workpiece is cut at the fixed cut-off length. However, in practical application, even the master alloy rod workpieces produced in the same batch and the same furnace may be inconsistent due to the uneven ingot mold sizes and the processing for eliminating defects on the cast surface, with a ±2 mm error in the outer diameter of the master alloy rod workpiece from the nominal one. The error in outer diameter will cause unconformity of weight of the cut-off segment to the subsequent precision casting or pulverizing process, and in turn waste of the master alloy material or insufficient shrinkage compensation of the cast piece.
The grinding wheel cutting apparatus of the present disclosure provides a fixed-weight cutting approach, in which an outer diameter of a rod workpiece to be cut is measured by a laser distance finder (i.e., a laser distance sensor) while the rod workpiece is locked and held stable, and a cut-off length of the rod workpiece is determined based on the outer diameter, a material density of the rod workpiece and a required weight. That is, the cut-off length is determined by the following equation:
Wherein L denotes the cut-off length; d denotes the outer diameter measured by the laser distance sensor; G denotes segment weight set by a user, i.e., the required weight; ρ denotes the material density of the rod workpiece; and π denotes circumference ratio.
The master alloy rod workpiece usually has a number of grinding and dressing spots. In order to avoid measurement error of the outer diameter of the master alloy rod workpiece, in an embodiment of the disclosure, the rod workpiece is rotated by a rotation apparatus while measured by the laser distance sensor, so as to obtain a set of outer diameters. The set of out diameters are averaged to obtain an accurate outer diameter d.
As shown in
There are two methods for removing the oxide scale of the master alloy rod workpiece, in which the rod workpiece skinned by a lathe usually has a good roundness and the rod workpiece skinned by a roller mill may have a slightly elliptical shape. In an embodiment of this disclosure, when measuring the outer diameter of the master alloy rod workpiece skinned by the lathe, it may be rotated by 45°, and for the master alloy rod workpiece skinned by the roller mill, it may be rotated by 90°.
In an embodiment of the disclosure, the grinding wheel cutting apparatus may further comprise an automatic feeder, as shown in
In an embodiment of the disclosure, as shown in
As shown in
As shown in
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the out diameter of the rod workpiece 103 is measured by a laser distance finder. As shown in
In an embodiment of the disclosure, in the cutting process of the rod workpiece implemented by the cutting apparatus, the rod workpiece may be circularly cut while being rotated by the chuck 702 until the cutting reaches a preset core diameter. That is, the rod workpiece is circularly cut and the cutting is finished when the cut depth reaches a preset depth. In an embodiment of the present disclosure, as shown in
In the embodiment of the disclosure, the grinding wheel cutting apparatus cuts the rod workpiece to a preset core diameter and does not cut off the rod workpiece. In other words, the grinding wheel does not pass through the center of the rod workpiece, so as to avoid particles and dusts entering into a shrinkage hole of the rod workpiece in the cutting process, thereby avoiding a scrap of the precision cast piece caused by the particles and dusts. In order to prevent the grinding wheel from contacting the shrinkage hole in the cutting process and realize the above cutting method, the cutting apparatus circularly cuts the rod workpiece in a mutual manner, that is, the rod workpiece is rotated while being cut, so as to realize a circular cutting, and the cut depth is controlled.
In order to avoid the contamination caused by the grinding wheel passing through the shrinkage hole as described above, in the embodiment of the disclosure, the cutting apparatus circularly cuts the rod workpiece in a mutual manner. In addition, in order to avoid the shrinkage hole from being exposed to the cutting environment, the cutting apparatus cuts a single rod workpiece by multiple cuttings and in a non-cut-through way. However, the rod workpiece that is not straight may sway (bounce) during the rotating-and-cutting process, which may cause the rod workpiece to break off or hinder the cutting process, and may result in accidents. In view of this, the cutting apparatus in an embodiment of the disclosure may further comprise a flexible supporting device configured to flexibly support a part of the rod workpiece that has been cut, so as to prevent the part from being broken off by the rotation or hindering the subsequent cutting process. The flexible supporting device may comprise a supporting bracket, a V-shaped plate, a floating spring and a first hydraulic cylinder. As shown in
In this embodiment, the cylinder mounting plate 901, the up-down moving plate 902 and the guide rods 903 may be disposed on the bottom plate 904 to constitute an upper supporting bracket. A chain wheel for transferring the rod workpieces may be disposed on the bottom plate 904 and pass through the upper supporting bracket. The cylinder mounting plate of the upper supporting bracket may be provided with a first hydraulic cylinder for driving the up-down moving plate 902 to move up and down. The rod workpiece to be cut is placed on the chain wheel 907, the chain wheel 907 supports the rod workpiece and transfers the rod workpiece to the next processing station after cutting of the rod workpiece is finished. The supporting device in this embodiment may further comprise a bottom plate 904, a cross beam 905 and a vertical plate 906, which constitute a chain wheel supporting platform for supporting the chain wheel 907.
As shown in
As shown in
As shown in
In an embodiment, another V-shaped plate 908 may be installed below the up-down moving plate 902 to coordinate with the V-shaped plate on the conveyor belt of the chain wheel 907 to prevent the rod workpiece from swaying. In the embodiment, the flexible supporting device provides flexible support for the rod workpiece through the upper and lower floating springs, and the flexible supporting device moves synchronously with the rod workpiece, allowing for stable cutting of the rod workpiece as supported.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the grinding wheel cutting apparatus may further comprise an automatic chuck locking device, whose cross-sectional view is shown in
In the embodiment, the mechanical chuck 1301 is used in replacement of the hydraulic chuck commonly used in the related art whose inner hole is too small, so that the cutting apparatus in the embodiment can meet more various requirements for the cutting and can be more applicable.
In the embodiment, the locking of the chuck involves two operations: rotating of the chuck key, and moving of the chuck key into or off the chuck keyhole. In order to realize these two operations, the chuck key needs to cooperate with a rotating mechanism and a lifting mechanism. In an embodiment, the automatic chuck locking device adopts a combination of the hydraulic motor and the lifting cylinder, in which a torsion of the hydraulic motor is converted into a pressure to control the locking degree of the chuck. The hydraulic motor is controlled by a pressure sensor to lock the chuck. The lifting cylinder drives the chuck key to move into or off the chuck.
In addition, as the automatic chuck locking mechanism comprises the mechanical chuck instead of a hydraulic chuck commonly used in the related art to fix the rod workpiece, in another embodiment of the present disclosure, the cutting apparatus may be provided with two sets of automatic chuck locking mechanisms to support and hold the rod workpiece being cut more stably by two mechanical chucks.
In an embodiment of the disclosure, after the rod workpiece is cut into segments, the rod workpiece is transferred by the chain wheel to the subsequent operating station to be pressed and broken off. The cutting apparatus in the embodiment may further comprise a floating roller conveying mechanism arranged at a station where a pressing/breaking operation is performed. The floating roller conveying mechanism ensures safety of the rollers and sufficient resilience in pressing and breaking the rod workpiece, and the stability over long-term operation. In contrast, the conventional roller conveying mechanism is lifted by air cylinders, therefore the cost is high, and the positioning of the workpiece is inaccurate. The roller conveying mechanism in the embodiment of the present disclosure ensures the smooth movement of the rod workpieces, ensures safety of the rollers and the relevant mechanism in the pressing/breaking operation, and ensures accuracy of the pressing/breaking position.
After the rod workpiece is cut, the controller controls the floating roller conveying mechanism to transfer the cut rod workpiece to a designated position where the cut rod workpiece is clamped and fixed by a clamping device. As shown in
In addition, in an embodiment of the present disclosure, the grinding wheel cutting apparatus may be further provided with a fume duct 2202 and a particle collecting device 2201. The particle collecting device may be arranged at a position where the rod workpiece is cut, so as to collect particles generated in the cutting operation. As shown in
In the related art, the collected fume and particles are not separated but are discharged together from the duct, causing pollution to the environment. In an embodiment of the disclosure, a fume/particle collecting device is provided for collecting fume and particles generated in cutting the rod workpieces by the grinding wheel cutting apparatus. The fume/particle collecting device may comprise a fume/particle collecting box 2201 and a fume duct 2202. The fume/particle collecting box 2201 may be arranged below a tangent line passing a point where the grinding wheel of the cutting apparatus and the rod workpiece contact, for collecting the particles generated by the cutting apparatus. The fume duct 2202 may be disposed between the fume/particle collecting box 2201 and the grinding wheel, and may be in communication with the dust collecting box 2201, for discharging the generated fume.
As shown in
In this embodiment, the fume duct 2202 and the particle collecting device 2201 are effectively combined. The fume duct 2202 may be provided on the upper part of the particle collecting device 2201. Since the density of the fume is different from that of the particles, the fume is discharged through the fume duct 2202, and the particles deposit to the bottom of the particle collecting device 2201 by their weight. So the fume and the particles are discharged hierarchically, the period for replacing a filter cartridge of the cutting apparatus is prolonged, the using cost of the filter cartridge is reduced, and the collection of particles is more convenient. In addition, for high temperature alloys, the scarcity of strengthening elements makes sorting and recycling scrap material of the alloys by specifications more important. In this embodiment, collecting boxes with the drawer structure are provided to collect particles of different specifications respectively, making is possible to sort and collect the particles according to specifications of the alloys, which is favorable for recycling.
The grinding wheel cutting apparatus provided by the present disclosure improves the operation efficiency, reduces the labor intensity, and improves the quality of the product. Moreover, the components of the grinding wheel cutting apparatus such as the automatic feeder, the chuck locking mechanism, the flexible supporting device, and the fume/particle collecting mechanism and the like, can be independently designed as individual modules, and can be assembled by connectors such as screws, thereby providing a more convenient and intelligent cutting apparatus.
In an embodiment of the disclosure, the grinding wheel cutting apparatus may further comprise a plurality of housings for accommodating the mechanisms and modules described above respectively.
The cutting of metal materials usually involves heavy labor, high pollution, frequent accidents and low degree of automation. However, with the fully-automatic, fully-enclosed grinding wheel cutting apparatus provided in the present disclosure, the safety and efficiency of the grinding wheel cutting can be improved, labor intensity and occupational injuries can be reduced, precision of workpiece can be improved by intelligent process control, and contamination to the workpiece in the machining process can be avoided.
The present disclosure provides a grinding wheel apparatus, as shown in
As shown in
As shown in
The pull rod 253 may pass through the spindle, and a pull rod head 2532 may be fixed to one end of the spindle. In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the pull rod head may be fixed to one end of the spindle by bolts. At least one spring may be arranged between the pull rod head and the spindle. In the embodiment shown in
The tapered bucket 2521 may be inserted into the spindle from the other end of the spindle, so the buckle slot is engaged with the T-shaped buckle of the pull rod in the spindle, thereby fixing the flange on which the grinding wheel is mounted to the other end of the spindle.
In an embodiment of the disclosure, the grinding wheel may be connected to one side of the flange by a thread connection.
In an embodiment of the present disclosure, as shown in
In an embodiment of the disclosure, when disassembling the grinding wheel apparatus, the head of the pull rod is pushed by a hydraulic cylinder to separate the flange from the spindle while rotating the pull rod. With this arrangement, the flange and the grinding wheel can be replaced rapidly.
In another aspect of the disclosure, it is provided a grinding wheel cutting apparatus with the aforesaid grinding wheel apparatus. A transmission device of the grinding wheel cutting apparatus drives the spindle of the grinding wheel apparatus and therefore rotate the grinding wheel to cut.
It is another aspect of the disclosure to provide a rod workpiece cutting method for cutting a rod workpiece by the grinding wheel cutting apparatus of the present disclosure, as shown in
step S101: determining a material density of a rod workpiece to be cut and a segment weight of a segment to be cut off from the rod workpiece according to a user instruction;
step S102: obtaining an outer diameter of the rod workpiece;
step S103: determining a segment length of the segment based on the outer diameter, the material density of the rod workpiece and the segment weight;
step S104: cutting the rod workpiece according to the segment length.
With the method provided in an embodiment of the present disclosure, the cutting and blanking are controlled by the cutting apparatus in a quantitative manner, and the weight of each rod workpiece segment cut from the rod workpiece is precisely controlled, therefore the weight deviation of the rod workpiece segments caused by irregularity of the cast piece can be suppressed, and the requirements on the pressing/breaking equipment can be reduced.
Those skilled in the art should understand that the embodiments of this disclosure can be provided as methods, systems or computer program products. Therefore, this disclosure may be implemented in the form of fully-hardware embodiments, fully-software embodiments, or combined software-hardware embodiments. In addition, this disclosure may employ the form of a computer program product implemented on one or more computer storage medium (including but not limited to disk memory, CD-ROM, and optical memory) containing computer programming code.
This disclosure is set forth by referring to flow charts and/or block diagrams for the methods, devices (systems), and computer program products of the embodiments. It should be understood that each process and/or block of the flow charts and/or block diagrams as well as combinations of the processes and/or boxes of the flow charts and/or block diagrams can be realized by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions can be provided to general-purpose computers, special-purpose computers, embedded processors or the processors of other programmable data processing devices to produce a machine, so that an apparatus for implementing the functions designated in one or more processes of the flowcharts and/or one or more blocks of the block diagrams can be produced by the instructions executed by the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing device.
These computer program instructions can also be stored in a computer-readable storage medium which can guide a computer or other programmable data processing device to operate in a particular way, so that an article of manufacture comprising an instruction apparatus can be produced by the instructions stored in the storage medium, with the instruction apparatus implementing the functions designated in one or more processes of the flowcharts and/or one or more blocks of the block diagram.
These computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing device to make the computer or other programmable data processing device perform a sequence of computer-implemented operations, so that the instructions executed by the computer or other programmable data processing device realize one or more processes of the flowcharts and/or one or more blocks of the block diagram.
The principles and implementations of the present disclosure have been described above by means of some embodiments. It should be understood that the embodiments are meant to facilitate understanding of the principles of the present disclosure, and those skilled in the art can make any modifications based on the teachings of this disclosure. This specification shall not be construed as any limitation to the present disclosure.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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201910244955.4 | Mar 2019 | CN | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/CN2020/082181 | 3/30/2020 | WO | 00 |