MEFE—Mitchell Engineering Food Equipment Pty Ltd
23 Storie Street Clontarf QLD 4019 Australia
www.mefe.com.au
AUG 23 Page 10
+617 3283 4536
4. ABRASIVE WHEELS
The Grinding wheels ed into this machine are of special design. The are made of steel and supplied in matching pairs with
one each le and right handed threaded form—termed “spiral”.
The standard wheels range from 94.8—107 mm diameter with a thin uniform electroplated coang of CBN abrasive on the
periphery of the form. Standard abrasives are CBN 126 and 76 grit although other grades are available on request.
Due to this special construcon, no reducon in wheel diameter in the convenonal sense. Is experienced in the grinding pro-
cess. This means than any form of compensaon for wheel wear or methods of maintaining a consistent grind angle are not
required. In addion, CBN used at the designed speeds produces a relavely cool grind in most cases and be used dry.
CBN has been found to be parcularly suitable for applicaons such as knife sharpening where a small depth of cut per pass is
required. It is a very cool cung abrasive, and as such does not normally overheat martensic stainless steels used for knives
even when used in the dry condion, except in cases where heavy metal removal is required or excessive pressure used. Such
excessive pressure may reduce wheel life and also eect the corrosion resistance of the stainless steel blade and may under
certain circumstances lead to cracking.
4.1 Care of Wheels
The spiral wheng wheel should be handled carefully at all mes, both on and o the machine. Extra care should be taken not
to damage either the CBN coang or the bores and boss faces.
If damage has occurred due to chaering, usually on he lead in of the spiral form, this can be reced by removing the wheels
from the machine and smoothing in the damage with an engineer’s le to produce a burr free leading angle again.
If the wheels are incorrectly interlocked damage will occur to the edges of the abrasive coang and to the grooves in the
wheels. A disncve ringing noise will
signify this problem. To correct this the
clearance of the wheels must be re-set
as described in Secon 4.4.
In extreme cases of incorrect interlock
serious damage may occur if an
aempt to use the machine is made.
Damage resulng in unnecessary loss
of wheel life will be caused if grinding
is connued when the coang be-
comes excessively worn, in whole or
part, resulng in the steel surface of
the wheel being exposed.
4.2 Abrasive Recoang
With increased use the single layer abrasive becomes worn and loses its bite without loss of wheel size.
Normally, wheels can be chemically stripped of the electroplate and any CBN recovered, and if the form has not been dam-
aged, then recoated. This process can be repeated a number of mes, but if however, the form is damaged, then it will need to
be re-machined to the original prole before replang. Depending on the applicaon, obviously there will be a limit to the
number of mes this can be done before a new wheel is required. (see also Secon 3.3).
Fig 4.1