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We are developing a grinder that is driven straight out of solid works with no additional cam system . . . It uses an acoustical sensor for touching off on the wheel and proceeds to grind a complex 3D profile holding tenths. It learns the wear rate of the wheel by continually checking the wheel and can dynamically adjust the workpiece offsets to ensure accuracy across a run of 1000's of parts.
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I just have to ask.
Check the wheel or check the parts coming off? No machine defection as the wheel loads and dulls before the next dress?
Realtime checking of the wheel (or cutting tool dia.) gets me in the ballpark but has not been able to control the process itself tight enough.
For me no matter how big and stiff the iron or how small the feedback loop increments, everything bends as the tool pressure changes.
Just cycling the part through twice without unclamping will often blow my entire tolerance limit so the machine "learn" a back-off on a rerun cycle and this back-off is different on varying parts.
It's not really a "smart" machine but it does sort of "think" about what the output gauge tells it and tries to find a good average number to use.
It also knows and tries to adjust this number differently at 2 pieces on the part counter into the dress vs. 500 on the part count.
As another aside but perhaps more to what do we do with our workforce.
How many people will these machines you are building put out on the street? There is only a fixed amount of dollars.
Will your check come from increased market share or less people getting paid? If you increase market share isn't somebody loosing a job in another plant?
Everything you automate or make run faster means bad news for somebody somewhere.
How do you feel good about this and what you do eliminating jobs? What happens, what do you think when you haved unemployed someone close to you in the family?
Not so bad when faceless people.... close relatives and good friends, been down that rabbit hole once or twice.
Are you the good guy or the bad guy? Does this produce sleepless nights?
Bob