The upgraded Suprema Easy from Jones & Shipman Hardinge Ltd, Leicester (
www.jonesshipman.com), is a multi-purpose cylindrical grinding machine that can be applied to high-volume production grinding or small-batch quantities — plus one-off work encountered in toolroom or prototyping environments.
Available with three grinding-length capacities of 650mm, 1,000mm and 1,500mm between centres, Suprema machines offer two wheel-head options — external and universal (which combines external and internal grinding).
A key feature of these machines is the speed of set-up for dressing cycles and grinding cycles via Jones & Shipman’s ‘Easy’ graphical grinding software, which features touch-screen technology; and with the latest Fanuc control, there is storage capacity for thousands of dressing and grinding programs.
The control also offers increased processing speeds and a USB port. Meanwhile, the latest Fanuc digital drives and motors have also been incorporated to ensure optimum responsiveness and a stiffer overall system, while Heidenhain’s 12.5nm scales on the vertical and cross-feed axes provide a 40% interpolation improvement.
Increased diameters on both the left- and right-hand external wheels offer longer wheel life and improved productivity by reducing the number of wheel dressings required in the grinding cycles, while the option of increased wheel-head power can further increase productivity.
Other standard features include a manual mode as well as easy and rapid set-up for fully automatic dressing and grinding cycles via the touch-screen.
Dress mode offers various standard wheel shape options, plus the ability to construct a further 20 different shapes via the touch-screen.
Grind cycle mode, which allow the programming of a single grinding cycle or up to 20 grinding cycles, has been developed to provide the operator with easy-to-follow, colour icon-based programming via the touch-screen, giving the advantages of CNC without the complexity of traditional CNC systems.