Jig Grinding Dies and Molds on a Makino Vertical Machining Center Video 2021

Learn how to lower your cost up to 50% using Makino's closed-loop tolerance control process to replace manual jig grinding. The presentation will explain how you can hard-mill and finish-grind in a single setup including in machine-probing inspection.

The current method of processing the five sides of a detail is very labor and time-intense and requires highly-skilled tool makers. Typically, the five to six sides are surface-ground with a manual setup for each surface, as well as jig grinding for O.D. features and is time-consuming with a much higher chance for errors.

In addition, the inspection process is a manual operation requiring stacking squares on a surface plate with a height indicator—if the feature is out of tolerance, then the operator must re-setup, grind and re-inspect.

The Makino solution is the closed-loop tolerance control process, which is to hard-mill the geometry for roughing and semi-finishing in hardened materials up to 95 HRa in carbide. In the same setup, the machine verifies the tolerance using probe in the spindle. The next step is to grind the 2D geometries in the same machine and setup. This would include bores, bosses, pockets or free-form contours. The approaches include chop, contour or face grinding.

Then, the grinding process is verified via the spindle probe and confirmed that the material is within a specified tolerance—or it rewinds and applies cutter compensation.

This solution is applicable for fine blanking, trim dies and high-cavitation mold inserts and reduces setups, automates the entire process and provides uniform surface finishes all in one setup on one machine without the need for hand-fitting.

Primary Topics:

• Closed-loop tolerance control
• Hard-milling
• Grinding on a vertical machining center
• Closed-loop inspection