Edm or broaching spline

INTEGREX GEEK · Mar 14, 2018

Hello

I am looking for anyone who can make the internal spline only

Edm or broaching?

DM me your email.

Thank you

Chris

pianoman8t8 · Mar 15, 2018

This would be ideal for a spline/gear. I don't have one, but figured I'd point you in that direction. We have one at my place of employment, but I don't think you'd like the estimate from there.

INTEGREX GEEK · Mar 15, 2018

pianoman8t8 said:
This would be ideal for a spline/gear. I don't have one, but figured I'd point you in that direction. We have one at my place of employment, but I don't think you'd like the estimate from there.

Thank you pianoman88

SeaMoss · Mar 15, 2018

INTEGREX GEEK said:
Edm or broaching?

Internal shaper. Three or four hour job if someone has the correct cutter. Don't know if you could do a wire edm in that amount of time but easier to get size with a gear shaper.

Red James · Mar 15, 2018

Are the 'spline' tolerances on the order of 0.0004?

Like for a closure cavity? If so, EDM is your best option.

Zahnrad Kopf · Mar 15, 2018

You mean like this? :cool:

Gobo · Mar 15, 2018

Depending on the length and your tolerances, a rotary broach may be worth considering.

pianoman8t8 · Mar 15, 2018

Red James said:
Are the 'spline' tolerances on the order of 0.0004?

Eh, not really. It largely depends on the spline, and customer requirements. We make lots of splines, but internal and external, as small as about 1" diameter, to as large as about 10" diameter, but with shaping (internal and external in a Fellows shaper) and grinding (Reform spline grinder, external), and tolerances vary a lot depending on customer. Some are in the +/- .002" range, others are a bit tighter. There's a couple that even have a tight form and lead tolerance though. So, the tolerance can be much more open than .0004"

Click to expand...

SeaMoss · Mar 15, 2018

pianoman8t8 said:
(Reform spline grinder, external)

Ooh. How do you like it ? Do you guys grind involutes on it or just straight-sided ? And how did you happen to choose a pretty unusual machine ? Seems like many people now are afraid of anything they "can't get service" for ... do they make an internal attachment ?

pianoman8t8 · Mar 16, 2018

It's been a great machine, recently had a computer board failure, but service to replace it seemed reasonable. We grind involute splines, straight, crowned, helical, a pretty wide variety. The machine has a built-in CMM for checking most of the features.

SeaMoss · Mar 16, 2018

pianoman8t8 said:
It's been a great machine...

Thanks for the info, there's not much about them out there. How did you happen to choose that over, say, a Hofler or something better advertised ?

reedeprintice · Mar 17, 2018

We might be able to broach that for you.

pianoman8t8 · Mar 17, 2018

SeaMoss, I really don't know. The machine was already there when I started at this company 5yrs ago. We haven't had any problems getting service techs in when needed, though, we don't have any complaints about their service as far as I know. It's a great machine, and it's able to generate most of the profiles for the wheel dressing right on its own computer. Some of the more "custom" shapes need to get drawn separately, like in Solidworks, then saved as a DXF, then loaded into the machines computer (not the control), which will read it and generate a dressing profile/program, then you can send that from the machines computer to the control, then start making your wheel profile from there. It's a smoother series of events than I made it out to be... Except for the drawing of the profile in Solidworks, which really isn't that bad, just a little time consuming. I can have drawing of the involute profile, with whatever pitch dia, root rad, corner rads, etc, saved as a DXF, then trim off the extra crap (like title block, etc) so all that's left is the intended wheel profile, in about 1-2hrs, so it's not too bad. We're not a high-volume production shop. We're "sort of" like a job shop, but it's just a lot of repeating work in small quantities. I don't do much with the Reform spline grinder, but it is in the department that I am the lead of, the Grinding Dept. For CNC cylindrical grinders we have 2 Studers (S40 & S41), a Danobat (roughly 8-9' between centers), a Usach 300 (about 12ft between centers), a manual SMTW cylindrical grinder, and they also stuck the Fellows shaper in there, as well as the Barber Coleman hob. For the more open-toleranced OD straight splines, we've started hobbing them in the CNC with a hob attachment on the turret, saves a ton of time. And we've also taken some other larger ones, and even milled them with a milling cutter in the WFL mill-turns. This took the time to make a spline from about 6-8hrs down to about 45min, negating setup time for either one. This one in particular is about a 10" OD spline, I want to say 188 teeth? Don't quote me on that.

Anyway, my apologies INTEGREX GEEK, I know this was a bit of a tangent to the post.

INTEGREX GEEK · Mar 17, 2018

pianoman8t8 said:
SeaMoss, I really don't know. The machine was already there when I started at this company 5yrs ago. We haven't had any problems getting service techs in when needed, though, we don't have any complaints about their service as far as I know. It's a great machine, and it's able to generate most of the profiles for the wheel dressing right on its own computer. Some of the more "custom" shapes need to get drawn separately, like in Solidworks, then saved as a DXF, then loaded into the machines computer (not the control), which will read it and generate a dressing profile/program, then you can send that from the machines computer to the control, then start making your wheel profile from there. It's a smoother series of events than I made it out to be... Except for the drawing of the profile in Solidworks, which really isn't that bad, just a little time consuming. I can have drawing of the involute profile, with whatever pitch dia, root rad, corner rads, etc, saved as a DXF, then trim off the extra crap (like title block, etc) so all that's left is the intended wheel profile, in about 1-2hrs, so it's not too bad. We're not a high-volume production shop. We're "sort of" like a job shop, but it's just a lot of repeating work in small quantities. I don't do much with the Reform spline grinder, but it is in the department that I am the lead of, the Grinding Dept. For CNC cylindrical grinders we have 2 Studers (S40 & S41), a Danobat (roughly 8-9' between centers), a Usach 300 (about 12ft between centers), a manual SMTW cylindrical grinder, and they also stuck the Fellows shaper in there, as well as the Barber Coleman hob. For the more open-toleranced OD straight splines, we've started hobbing them in the CNC with a hob attachment on the turret, saves a ton of time. And we've also taken some other larger ones, and even milled them with a milling cutter in the WFL mill-turns. This took the time to make a spline from about 6-8hrs down to about 45min, negating setup time for either one. This one in particular is about a 10" OD spline, I want to say 188 teeth? Don't quote me on that.

Anyway, my apologies INTEGREX GEEK, I know this was a bit of a tangent to the post.

No problem.
Interesting to read. How stuff is made.

pianoman8t8 · Mar 17, 2018

I wish I could post photos of our work, but you know how it is... We did have parts on the SpaceX rocket Falcon Heavy, though! I was told we could say that we did make some parts for that, just no specifics.

We've ground Aluminum plasma coating, bronze coatings, HVOF coatings, tungsten carbide coatings, some other weird coating that turned my coolant from an iced-tea color to green (it was pretty soft though!), inconel, stainless, waspolloy, many varieties of forged, hardened, and plain/miraging steels, titanium, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Diameters (so far) as large as 24", but most in the 12" and smaller range, including ID's, with down to +/- .00015" tolerances which usually have a .0002" total runout tolerance to other datums that are ground sometimes int eh same setup, sometimes not.

Zahnrad Kopf · Mar 17, 2018

pianoman8t8 said:
Some of the more "custom" shapes need to get drawn separately, like in Solidworks, then saved as a DXF, then loaded into the machines computer (not the control), which will read it and generate a dressing profile/program, then you can send that from the machines computer to the control, then start making your wheel profile from there. It's a smoother series of events than I made it out to be... Except for the drawing of the profile in Solidworks, which really isn't that bad, just a little time consuming. I can have drawing of the involute profile, with whatever pitch dia, root rad, corner rads, etc, saved as a DXF, then trim off the extra crap (like title block, etc) so all that's left is the intended wheel profile, in about 1-2hrs, so it's not too bad.

I'm familiar with a similar process used on a Blohm. That has a Seimens on it and uses Two single point diamonds for dressing the shape. One uploads a profile of the desired wheel dress, sets the parameters for dressing ( material removal per pass, etc... ) and it generates a dressing program and runs it to impart the form into the wheel. It also ( obviously ) has the ability to dress the Rack Tooth compliment of an Involute and then run a Generative program to actually Generate the proper Involute profile.

There is NOTHING inexpensive about that machine. The Diamonds alone were Thousands. EACH. The indexing attachment was shocking in price. One finds these things out right after crashing. :rolleyes5:

SeaMoss · Mar 17, 2018

pianoman8t8 said:
It's a great machine,

Thanks, that was interesting. I know a little about the Hoflers, the Rapid sounds a little more advanced wheel-dressing-wise but maybe just because it's newer. Sounds like you have a fun shop. Reform sounds cool, hadn't heard much about them. I'm kind of a Maag generating fan myself :codger:

For straight-sided splines, someone German made a spline miller with two form cutters, one on each side, cut two at once then the part would index. That was real fast. I guess you could use it for involutes, too. Hmm.

pianoman8t8 · Mar 17, 2018

Seamoss, when I say straight-sided splines, what I mean is no crown and not helical. Still involute on the flank, but a 1-axis movement with the cutter.

Zahnrad, I'm surprised to hear about the 2 single point diamonds. Our Reform uses a single diamond rotary dresser, on it's own 2-3 axis. It can rotate as it's dressing to be able to dress the entire profile in 1 pass, with 1 diamond dressing wheel.

In regard to the single point diamond, I guess it depends on what you must be buying? For our other cylindrical grinders we buy .020" rad single point diamonds, and I don't think they're quite that expensive. I want to say around $400/ea? They have, I think, a 3/8" shank with a milled flat to be held in place via set screw, in a holding block that can be fixed to the headstock, tailstock, flip-down dresser, or a table-mounted dresser. I know, lots of options. We also have rotary dressers for the Studer and Danobat, and about 1 year or more ago, I made a mount to be able to hold the rotary dresser so that it's axis was vertical instead of horizontal, so that I'm using the entire OD of the dresser to dress a form on a wheel, instead of relying on the corner radius of the diamond rotary dresser (which breaks down as you'll see) to put a good form on what is essentially a full-round (180deg, .255" rad with a flat in the middle) copper-bonded diamond grinding wheel. Since the corner radius of the dresser wheel would break down, oriented horizontally, you'd be relying on the corner radius to be consistent to be to put on a consistent radius on the grinding wheel. Since this really wasn't possible due to dresser wheel wear causing bad radius form, I went a mounted it vertically, so now the dressing wheel radius that's being interpolated about the corner radius of the grinding wheel is the dressing wheel OD, not the corner rad. It really has no other option but to produce a consistent radius on the grinding wheel, so long as you adjust the dressing tool radius every so many passes to keep up with the wear. Diamond dressing diamond... good times.

This all came about when I was trying to grind a spherical profile on the end of a shaft (about a 200deg profile, tapered down to a neck diameter), in tungsten carbide coating, on 2 different part sizes. 2.250" OD, and about 4.500" OD, and maintain a .002" profile tolerance of the feature relative to a couple other datums. Radius form/profile error on the grinding wheel directly translates to form/profile error on the shaft being ground.

pianoman8t8 · Mar 17, 2018

FWIW, the Reform has Siemens control as well. Forgot to mention that previously.

Zahnrad Kopf · Mar 17, 2018

pianoman8t8 said:
Zahnrad, I'm surprised to hear about the 2 single point diamonds. Our Reform uses a single diamond rotary dresser, on it's own 2-3 axis. It can rotate as it's dressing to be able to dress the entire profile in 1 pass, with 1 diamond dressing wheel.

In regard to the single point diamond, I guess it depends on what you must be buying? For our other cylindrical grinders we buy .020" rad single point diamonds, and I don't think they're quite that expensive. I want to say around $400/ea? They have, I think, a 3/8" shank with a milled flat to be held in place via set screw, in a holding block that can be fixed to the headstock, tailstock, flip-down dresser, or a table-mounted dresser. I know, lots of options. We also have rotary dressers for the Studer and Danobat, and about 1 year or more ago, I made a mount to be able to hold the rotary dresser so that it's axis was vertical instead of horizontal, so that I'm using the entire OD of the dresser to dress a form on a wheel, instead of relying on the corner radius of the diamond rotary dresser (which breaks down as you'll see) to put a good form on what is essentially a full-round (180deg, .255" rad with a flat in the middle) copper-bonded diamond grinding wheel. Since the corner radius of the dresser wheel would break down, oriented horizontally, you'd be relying on the corner radius to be consistent to be to put on a consistent radius on the grinding wheel. Since this really wasn't possible due to dresser wheel wear causing bad radius form, I went a mounted it vertically, so now the dressing wheel radius that's being interpolated about the corner radius of the grinding wheel is the dressing wheel OD, not the corner rad. It really has no other option but to produce a consistent radius on the grinding wheel, so long as you adjust the dressing tool radius every so many passes to keep up with the wear. Diamond dressing diamond... good times.

This all came about when I was trying to grind a spherical profile on the end of a shaft (about a 200deg profile, tapered down to a neck diameter), in tungsten carbide coating, on 2 different part sizes. 2.250" OD, and about 4.500" OD, and maintain a .002" profile tolerance of the feature relative to a couple other datums. Radius form/profile error on the grinding wheel directly translates to form/profile error on the shaft being ground.

I very much like what you describe. To be sure, there are horses for courses. The system I described uses Diamond wheels that resemble a cupped grinding wheel, with the very outer, leading edge being the diamond part of the business. Two of them used in opposing ( mirror ) orientation to allow getting into the most tight of spots.

... with a Radius of .0010"/.0254mm ... :eek:

Easy to see how they get spendy, quickly. :cool:

To be fair, this was not purchased for Involutes. It was purchased for very specific ( and small ) Form Grinding. Often, such forms would incorporate "undercuts", so the Two diamonds were required to be able to reach all parts of the form. I simply realized the abilities and tried to take advantage of them.

LOL. You have my sympathies regarding the dressing woes of Diamond/Diamond. Did that once. That was enough. :rolleyes5:

Sounds like you've an interesting job that challenges you and affords room to learn and grow. I am glad. It's a rare bird these days. Kudos to you for taking advantage of it.

Have you ever considered purchasing or making a small wheel ID attachment to the Reform to allow smaller ID work? I looked, but don't find much about it, so will ask here - What control does the Reform use?

< EDIT - > You answered that while I was typing.

Thanks. I actually hated the Siemens on that Blohm. That things was a button pushing pain in the arse... Always Three menus deep to accomplish the simplest of tasks.

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