Double sided rounding

The silk matt sheen of the stainless steel plant and vessels for the food industry not only emit an optical impression of cleanliness and hygiene, but the fine metal surface finish also simplifies daily cleaning.

A Lissmac grinding machine which produces the matt finish demanded and rounds off all cut edges has been installed at a manufacturer of stainless steel equipment for this hygiene sensitive industry.

“All processing equipment from which complete plants for the production of foodstuffs, pharmaceutical products, animal feedstuffs and many others are configured, are subject to stringent hygiene and technical specifications. This includes, for example, thorough cleaning and disinfection at prescribed intervals and during product changeover. Cleaning of process equipment is to a large extent carried out manually.

Sharp edges, especially at monitoring points and cleaning apertures therefore have to be reliably eliminated”.

Model SBM-S 1000 which Lissmac installed consistently removes burrs, rounds corners and applies a matt finish on laser cut stainless steel blanks.

Until we installed the Lissmac deburring machine, we had to remove the burrs laboriously by hand with the associated problems of worker safety. With manual deburring, one can't achieve the consistent rounding-off that we produce with the SBM-S 1000. The machine offers throughput widths of 1000 or 1500 mm. Parts can be a maximum of 20 millimetres thick. The automatic feed is infinitely adjustable from 0 to 4 m/min. We can influence the degree of roundness by varying the feed rate”.

“The deburring principle is based on four counter-rotating abrasive belts. Two of the belts process the blank from below, and two from above, simultaneously. These belts carry abrasive flaps which are combined with abrasive nylon.

The abrasive belts remove the burrs while rounding-off the cut edges on the inner and outer contours. Meanwhile the abrasive nylon creates the matt silk sheen which many customers prefer.

The four counter-rotating abrasive belts offer a total grinding surface of 7.5 m². This design results in a long life. At the same time, high productivity and above all a particularly high quality of the ground surfaces is achieved. Abrasive belt changes are unproblematic and fast.

Several smaller plates can be placed side by side so that the maximum width capacity can be used. Also helpful was the advice of placing parts on the conveyor at an angle. Parts should have a minimum length of 140 millimetres.

The largest part we have processed was 3000 millimetres long, 800 millimetres wide and 10 millimetres thick.

“As typical special machine builders we produce single parts or short runs. In all, we have to work with well over 1000 different parts . Each achievable rationalisation effect is determined by the contour of each work piece to be ground. Thus the savings potential lies within the broad range of 10 to 90 percent compared to manual deburring."