Slide grinding

This process is a surface treatment process working on a chemical-mechanical base.

Chips and workpieces are brought into a relative movement to each other in the machine working vessel where water and compounds control the required surface treatment. The metal removal, finish and surface roughness depend on the composition and size of the chip, while the mechanical factors determine the specific grinding pressure on the workpiece. The trough-shaped vessel is hinged freerunning and is oscillated by a vibration stimulator.

To achieve the optimum slide grinding treatment, suitable optimum special chips were developed for different materials and treatment processes. Today, mostly ceramic- or plastic-bonded articles are used which are available in various sizes and shapes (Figure 1). Regarding quality, the chips vary in terms of their specific weight, hardness and structural characteristics. Depending on their physical properties, they are used for grinding, smoothing or polishing.

The chips have to fulfill the following requirements:

  • Low size tolerances for pre-shaped chips
  • High dimensional stability with continuing wear
  • Constant abrasive effect with low wear
  • High shatter resistance

Large chips (20 - 35mm) remove a large amount of material and are therefore used for rough treatments such as to remove rust or destale. Chips in the size of 10 - 20mm are used for deburring, fine grinding and smoothing, while a very small grain (3 - 10mm) is required for proper polishing.

Slide grinding has proved to be an especially rational form to treat surfaces. Thanks to innovative developments by different manufacturers, today it plays an important role in the construction process especially in die casting where it is predominantly used to debur die casting products (Fig. 2).

Special versions for the casting industry are rotary vibratros (Fig. 3), centrifugal force machines (Fig. 4) which have a treatment intensity which is 15 to 20 times higher compared to vibrators, linear tunnel machines (Fig. 5) which are basically used for deburring, rounding edges, cleaning and ball burnishing of working vessels with a usable width of 300 to 850mm and a usable length of up to 6600mm or the “Long Radius” slide grinding machine for magnesium die cast parts (Fig. 6). By removing the flakes, operational safety for subsequent assembly activities should be guaranteed. For example, it takes only 6.5 minutes for workpieces to run through the treatment tunnel which is 400mm wide and 9,000mm long

  • Fig. 1: Slide grinding technology – process materials, (Rösler Oberflächentechnik GmbH, Untermerzbach)
  • Fig. 2:  Die cast part to be treated in plastic chips, (Rösler Oberflächentechnik GmbH, Untermerzbach)
  • Fig. 3: “rotomatic” rotary vibrator: this new machine series reduces treatment times by nearly 50 percent compared to traditional rotary vibrator technology. They are mainly used as serial tunnel machines, but also as separate machine. Usable working vessel lengths of 15 to 27m guarantee a particularly high workpiece flow.(Rösler Oberflächentechnik GmbH, Untermerzbach)
  • Fig. 4: Centrifugal force machine with the Rösler two-batches system®. Such machines may be implemented in automated productions or can be used as isolated application. Its treatment spectrum varies from thin-wall spring elemts to massive castings which have to be deburred, grinded, rounded or polished.(Rösler Oberflächentechnik GmbH, Untermerzbach)
  • Fig. 5: Linear tunneling machine for completely automatic slide grinding. This machine technology distinguishes itself by is continuous workpiece feeding. Depending on the size and the sensitivity of the parts to be treated, time distances of workpiece feeding may be varied. (Rösler Oberflächentechnik GmbH, Untermerzbach)
  • Fig. 6: “Long Radius” slide grinding machine. This model range is used in the continuous mode for one-time cycles and consequentially for direct chaining. Parts made of zinc. aluminum or steel castings can be treated immediately after the chipping of the casting process. The range of Long Radius rotary vibrators comprises five types with usable lengths of five (R 250/5 LR, R 310/5 LR), eight (R 480/8 LR) and nine meters (R 400/9 LR, R 310/9 LR).(Rösler Oberflächentechnik GmbH, Untermerzbach)