This is the United States national phase of International Patent Application No. PCT/EP2014/052567, filed Feb. 10, 2014, which claims the priority benefit of German Application No. 10 2013 202 509.2, filed Feb. 15, 2013. The entire contents of each of the foregoing is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
The invention relates to a method and a grinding tool for high-precision centerless grinding of shaft-like workpieces with a high surface quality, such as in particular piston pins, shock absorber parts and piston rods for hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders.
Within the scope of this invention, high-precision ground shaft parts with a high surface quality are understood to be shaft-like parts whose surface quality and roundness tolerance amount to approximately 1 μm or less. Very high demands are made of the shape tolerance and surface quality for piston pins, shock absorber parts and piston rods for pressure cylinders in particular, these demands arising from the requirement for extremely reliable operation during use. Thus, for example, in the case of shaft-like shock absorber parts, sealing elements that slide on the surfaces of these shock absorber parts and must ensure a reliable seal from the inside to the outside as well as from the outside to the inside are provided on the shock absorbers. For piston pins, these high quality demands are derived from, among other things, the fact that the operating properties are exacerbated when the surface quality and the shape tolerances are lower than those given above.
It is known that the required surface quality and shape tolerance cannot be produced by grinding using known grinding wheels, which should also yield a reasonable cutting performance in addition to the high surface quality. Despite the fact that many such shaft parts are needed in large quantities, are to be manufactured inexpensively and with the shortest possible cycle time, a compromise is made between a high material removal performance and a high surface quality using known methods and machinery. This is because the required high material removal performance is achieved in a very good quality using traditional grinding machines, but the required high surface quality is achieved on an additional machine in a superfinishing process downstream from the grinding machine. Even if a combined machine, which performs the grinding in a first station and the superfinishing process in a second station, were conceivable, there would still be the major disadvantage that the workpieces must pass through at least two machining stations and thus there is a loss of manufacturing precision due to the re-chucking alone. In manufacturing on two different manufacturing machines, a) a greater space requirement is necessary, b) the costs are additionally much higher, and c) the corresponding handling systems are additionally needed between the two machines.
As a rule, a buffer storage must also be provided between the individual operating sequences, thus further increasing the cost of manufacturing.
To nevertheless be able to achieve the manufacturing costs and a short and simple flow of materials in production of the workpieces, it is known to be necessary to minimize the number of manufacturing steps. A relatively inexpensive production of the shaft-like workpieces with satisfactory accuracy, at least for a number of applications, can be achieved on surface quality and shape tolerance with the known machines and production processes. In particular, this has been possible through centerless grinding. In centerless grinding, the shaft-like components are often machined in a continuous process. However, it is impossible to achieve accuracy ranges even lower than 1 μm, as given above.
The fundamental design of such a centerless grinding machine is illustrated in a side view in
US 2002/115391A1 describes a centerless grinding method in which continuous grinding and plunge cut grinding are combined with one another in one clamping, i.e., they are performed sequentially. The grinding disk used for this has a cylindrical zone and a conical zone and the same grinding cover.
To achieve different grinding goals—on the one hand, the greatest possible removal rate to reduce the cycle time and, on the other hand, a good surface quality—there is a known grinding tool comprised of grinding disks, which are aligned in rows side by side and are braced axially with respect to one another, as described in G 89 04 986.1, for example. This grinding tool is combined into a grinding disk package in which the grinding cover is designed differently from one disk to the next by using different grain sizes of one and the same grinding medium.
DE 295 16 264 U1 and DE 195 33 836 B4 describe a grinding wheel having—within the grinding layer—different physical properties in the axial direction and thus are adapted to the different grinding. This is achieved by the fact that the concentration of grains in the axial direction is variable, preferably being variable linearly. Thus, the wear behavior of the grinding layer is to be adapted to the allowance of the workpiece that is to be ground off.
DE 38 11 584 A1 describes a grinding wheel for deep grinding, wherein different tasks are assigned to different surface sections of the grinding wheel. Thus, with this known grinding wheel, parts of the grinding surface are designed differently, taking into account the different loads, namely with regard to the used diamond grain sizes in these sections as well as their concentration. Thus the main material removal should be performed by the part of the grinding surface of the grinding wheel that first engages in the forward direction. This should be implemented with one zone of a coarse diamond grain size and a downstream zone with fine diamond grain size.
DE 24 62 847 C2 describes a method for honing and a honing machine for carrying out the method, in which boreholes in particular are to be created by means of a tool having a conical grinding zone and a cylindrical grinding zone. This tool cuts with a high efficiency in the conical zone and creates the desired surface in the cylindrical zone, which is set for the finished dimension. The grinding layer is of a coarser quality in the area of the conical zone to achieve a greater removal performance than in the cylindrical zone.
It is thus known from the prior art described above that the concentration and size of the abrasive grains are to be varied within a single grinding wheel in accordance with the grinding requirements in order to perform different grinding tasks with a grinding wheel. In addition, it is known from this prior art that grinding wheel having a conical section may be used to achieve high removal rates and a cylindrical section to achieve the corresponding surface quality.
Accordingly, the object of the present invention is to provide a method and a grinding tool for implementing the method for high-precision centerless grinding of shaft parts, in particular piston pins, shock absorber parts and piston rods for hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders, by means of which short cycle times and low machine costs can be achieved and re-chucking operations that have a negative influence on precision can be avoided.
According to the invention, a grinding tool for high-precision centerless grinding of shaft-like workpieces is made available. In particular for shaft-like workpieces such as piston pins, shock absorber parts or piston rods for hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders, the highest demands are made of accuracy of shape and surface quality. This grinding tool according to the invention has two grinding zones with respect to its axis of rotation, one conical grinding zone and one cylindrical grinding zone, the latter being connected axially to the conical grinding zone. The conical grinding zone is designed such that it is provided for grinding at a high removal rate, which is implemented with a first grinding layer. The cylindrical grinding zone is designed such that it is provided for grinding a high surface quality of the workpiece and comprises a second grinding layer. According to the invention, the first and second grinding layers differ at least with regard to their respective grinding materials. The binding and the layer specifications of the respective grinding layer of the first and second grinding layers are preferably also different. The grinding materials, the binding and the layer specifications as well as optionally also other physical or chemical properties of the first and second grinding layers may preferably also be different. It is particularly preferred if CBN is used as the grinding material for the first grinding layer and if diamond is used as the grinding material for the second grinding layer. Different grinding materials should be understood to be those which have different grinding properties because of their different chemical compositions.
The grinding tool with its conical and cylindrical grinding zones is provided so that the workpiece is moved past a stationary grinding tool. A shaft-like workpiece is ground in a continuous process using the grinding tool according to the invention. This means that finish grinding of a workpiece is achieved in a single pass through the path of movement, which corresponds to the width of the grinding tool. In this context, finish-grinding means that the shaft-like workpiece is completed with the highest precision with regard to dimensional accuracy, shape stability and surface quality.
The preferred embodiment of the second grinding layer using diamond as the grinding material surprisingly yields the effect of extremely precise surface quality, namely on a shaft-like workpiece, even usually made of normal steel. According to the knowledge of the average person skilled in the art, diamond is not suitable as the grinding material for grinding normal steel. This is because steel has a high affinity for carbon. Since diamond consists of pure carbon, it is not suitable for machining steel. Due to the high temperatures in the grinding process, steel extracts carbon atoms from diamond. The diamond grinding grain is therefore decomposed. Therefore, the wear on such a grinding wheel or such a grinding layer would be unjustifiably high. Nevertheless, it has now surprisingly been found that with the preferred combination of CBN for the conical grinding zone and diamond for the cylindrical grinding zone, the best grinding results are achieved with respect to dimensional accuracy, shape stability and surface quality.
When grinding is performed in a continuous process and/or in centerless grinding using the tool according to the invention, the grinding tool is then preferably constructed of at least two partial grinding disks, the first partial grinding disk of which forms the conical grinding zone and the second partial grinding disk forms the cylindrical grinding zone, wherein the two partial grinding disks are preferably braced with respect to one another, so that they are adjacent to one another without forming a grinding gap, i.e., gapless. “Gapless” in the context of this invention should be understood to mean that they are almost perfectly adjacent. In the case of the aforementioned two partial grinding disks, they are braced with their basic bodies on the grinding spindle, so that their basic bodies are in contact but the grinding layers in the braced state of the partial grinding disks have a slight distance of approximately 0.2 to 0.3 mm from one another, for example. This is necessary so that no lateral stresses are introduced into the grinding layers in the braced state.
An important advantage of such a grinding tool according to the invention is that reduced cycle times and thus substantial cost savings and an overall improvement in economic outcome are associated with production of the shaft-like workpiece with the highest precision. This is important in particular in the case of workpieces to be manufactured in large quantities by using the grinding tool according to the invention.
The conical grinding zone of the grinding tool is designed for high cutting output, while the second cylindrical grinding zone is preferably designed so that either only a very minor grinding abrasion or no mentionable grinding abrasion at all is implemented using this tool, but instead only superfinish-grinding or even only surface smoothing by polishing in the sense of a so-called spark-out process is achieved.
The grinding tool is preferably designed as a grinding disk package, with which the individual partial grinding disks that constitute the grinding tool are braced with one another or against each another, respectively, and with which the conical grinding zone is formed by at least two first partial grinding disks. The advantage that the conical grinding zone is formed by at least two first partial grinding disks consists of the fact that, on the one hand, both first partial grinding disks can preferably form a cone angle differing from one another, and, on the other hand, can be manufactured and mounted better. Therefore it is also possible in an advantageous manner to perform the high material abrasion in a stepped process so to speak, so that a greater material removal is achieved with the first partial grinding disk, which at first engages with the workpiece to be ground in the grinding process, whereas the subsequent additional first partial grinding disk having a smaller cone angle yields a lower material removal than the partial grinding disk, which comes into engagement first, so that lower grinding forces are introduced into the workpiece in the conical grinding zone having the lower cone angle before grinding by the cylindrical zone, and thus a better transition into the cylindrical second grinding zone of the grinding tool is ensured.
It is also possible to design the grinding tool in one piece, so that the first and second grinding layers are arranged on its basic body in such a way axially side by side that there is no gap but instead the two grinding layers are directly adjacent to one another without any gap and without forming a step.
According to a second aspect of the invention, a method for high-precision centerless grinding for a shaft-like workpiece is described, in particular for piston pins, shock absorber parts or piston rods for hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders. According to the invention, the workpiece to be ground to high-precision is ground in a single pass and in a single chucking using a single grinding tool having a conical grinding zone with one grinding layer and with a first grinding material and a cylindrical grinding zone connected thereto axially and having a grinding layer with a second grinding material, so that the allowance and surface quality of the workpiece are ground at least partially simultaneously in a single pass and thus on a single machine. The advantage consists of the fact that, in comparison with manufacturing methods known in the prior art, which always required two machines, the method according to the invention is associated with a substantial reduction in the investment expense and thus the cost of production, in addition to saving on space, which is important in particular in producing high-precision shaft-like workpieces in large quantities.
The first grinding material is preferably CBN, which grinds the allowance with a high material removal per unit of time, and the second grinding material is diamond, which is used so that a very small but definitely much lower material removal is ground than when using the CBN grinding zone. The diamond grinding zone for achieving an extremely high-precision surface quality can also preferably be used so that the material removal to be ground in this way in the manner of superfinishing is very small or even approaches zero in the sense of a spark-out, so that only smoothing and polishing are performed. In the context of this invention, superfinishing should be understood to refer to extremely fine grinding.
Additional advantages, embodiments and possible applications of the present invention are explained in detail below on the basis of the drawings, which show:
The respective grinding zones 3 of the grinding tool 1 and 15a of the regulating wheel 15 are dressed conically, and the grinding zone 4 of the grinding tool 1 and the grinding zone 15b of the regulating wheel 15 are dressed to be cylindrical or almost cylindrical. The regulating wheel 15 is preferably designed as a one-piece regulating wheel (corundum grinding wheel with rubber binding). Its shape can be dressed, preferably using a diamond cloth.
The specification for the grinding layer on the respective partial grinding disk can be selected differently, depending on which amount of the allowance is to be ground off by the respective partial grinding disk. The specifications for the respective grinding layer, such as its grain size, concentration, concentration distribution, binding, etc., as well as the respective cone angle may be different, depending on the material properties and dimensions of the workpieces to be ground. With different cone angles of the partial grinding disks, the first one or more partial grinding disks generally have a larger cone angle than the following partial grinding disks. The smaller the cone angle of a partial grinding disk, the smaller is the material removal to be ground by this partial grinding disk. Thus, it is possible with the grinding tool according to the invention to optimally adjust the grinding wheel specifications to the result to be ground. In particular, the first two partial grinding disks, for example, can preferably be designed for very high material removal rate, while the two following partial grinding disks with a smaller cone angle can be designed for a lower material removal rate accordingly, though for a better dimensional accuracy and better surface quality. The variation in the material removal rate can be intentionally graduated or implemented essentially as a continuous variation from partial grinding disk to partial grinding disk, depending on the number and design of the partial grinding disks. The difference in diameter of the partial grinding disks that have been dressed to be conical comprise at least the grinding allowance of the workpiece, which is based on the diameter. The conicity of the partial grinding disks can be dressed by using a diamond wheel and can be altered easily, depending on the specific application, by means of a dressing program stored in a grinding machine equipped with the grinding tool according to the invention in a CNC-controlled process. Instead of ceramic-bound CBN, a grinding material using a synthetic resin binding may be provided as the grinding material for the partial grinding disks having a conical contour.
The partial grinding disks 9, 10 shown in
By means of these partial grinding disks 9, 10 the surface on the shaft-like workpiece, which is not shown in
In the present embodiment, the partial grinding disks 9, 10 are diamond grinding disks having a ceramic binding or a synthetic resin binding. For example, due to the structure described in
The arrow shown at the bottom of
A high-precision dimensional accuracy and shape stability as well as surface quality can be achieved for centerless grinding in the continuous process, since the grinding tool 1 according to the invention combines a plurality of grinding disks having different physical properties by means of a clamping flange 12 in a grinding disk package on the grinding spindle 11 that rotates with the axis of rotation 2. Such a grinding tool in the form of a compact grinding wheel having a large width for removal of a larger material volume and at the same time achieving a high surface quality offers the possibility of applications in mass production with extremely high quality demands.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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10 2013 202 509.2 | Feb 2013 | DE | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/EP2014/052567 | 2/10/2014 | WO | 00 |