When Thames Valley Saw Service was established by two friends in 1973, they bought Vollmer manual grinding machines. Today, the company is using the most up-to-date and highest-specification machinery available — from the same supplier.
With over 35 years’ service at Thames Valley, workshop director Nigel Muttram has seen many changes. “Since I have been with the company, the industry has changed beyond recognition. We used to have a fume-filled workshop with staff manually grinding cutters, bandsaws and circular saw blades day in, day out. Over the years, saw blade tips and geometries have changed drastically; we have also moved with the times and invested in automated machine tools that can process our saw blades in ever-shorter cycle times.” To emphasise this point, Mr Muttram highlights Thames Valley’s position as the UK’s only distributer for the full range of Kanefusa products.
“As a supplier and service agent for the range of Japanese-manufactured Kanefusa tools for the wood and metal industries, we have to be capable of machining all geometries on all its cutting tools and saw blades. When Kanefusa develops new geometries to improve the performance of its saw blades, we have to be capable of re-grinding them. So, when the company developed its 3DX, 6DX and 10DX range of TCT blades — with three, six and 10 different tooth geometries on each blade respectively — our Vollmer CHD270 was more than up to the task.”
The Drayton-based 21-employee business now has a range of machines from Vollmer UK Ltd, Nottingham
(www.vollmer-group.com); these include a CX100 for sharpening carbide-tipped saws, a CHD270 with an ND230 robot-loader, a CHD250 for re-sharpening industrial TCT saws with particularly demanding geometries, and a KRD710 for processing HSS saw blades.
End of an era
The acquisition of the KRD710 in 2000 signalled the end of the manual-machining era for Thames Valley and its first step toward automated CNC re-sharpening; it also allowed the company to machine an HSS blade in 10min (the previous time with the manual machine was 25min per blade). Moreover, set-up times were drastically reduced, and wet grinding with CBN wheels produced a very accurate tooth geometry — and consistent quality. Thames Valley’s first large Vollmer machine was installed in 2004. With two grinding wheels in one machine, the CHD250 replaced two existing machines. “The CHD250 was certainly worth the investment. Besides improved work-flow and productivity, it gave us advanced programming and allowed us to deliver improved tooth geometries. Furthermore, the enclosed unit made a significant difference to the workshop environment. This machine was followed by a Vollmer CX100 for sharpening small TCT saws — 500mm maximum diameter — in small batches.”
In 2007, Thames Valley installed a Vollmer CHD270 with a three-station ND230 robotic loading system; it replaced a competitor’s machine. “We had the previous machine for nine years, during which it was unreliable, costly to repair, unproductive and time-consuming to set up. It would only hold certain saw-blade bore sizes, which resulted in additional setting times or the transfer of blades to other machines. With regard to productivity, the automatic loader could only hold 20 saw blades, so we could only machine 20 blades unmanned overnight.
“The Vollmer CHD270 eliminated all these issues. It copes easily with any bore size, the reliability has been exceptional, and the ND230 robotic loader accommodates 100 blades, resulting in overnight productivity increasing five-fold. The machine also has two touch probes for the automatic measurement of each tooth. Automatic wheel compensation is also a feature; this continually measures the grinding wheels, resulting in improved consistency and quality. From a productivity standpoint, the Vollmer is at least 20% faster than our previous grinding centre, and on average we are machining a 300mm-diameter TCT blade with 96 teeth in 17min.”