Ewag’s Profile Line — a five-axis grinding centre for indexable carbide inserts — is now available from Warwick-based Walter Ewag UK Ltd (www.walter-machines.com/uk), a member of the United Grinding Group.

Developed jointly by Ewag AG and sister company Walter Maschinenbau GmbH, and incorporating Ewag’s software and tooling expertise (which includes Ewag’s Smart chuck), this machine combines a traverse rate of 15m/min with X, Y and Z-axis travels of 330, 200 and 470mm respectively.

A six-station robot for changing grinding-wheel sets and coolant-supply manifolds is designed to optimise wheel selection and maximise the machining volume for sintered blanks.

Another feature for autonomous multi-shift operation is the use of an integrated six-axis Fanuc robot cell, where customer-specific pallets can be held and a high-resolution CCD-HD vision system is available for loading and unloading using magnetic grippers.

Cleaning, re-clamping and centring stations can also be integrated and adapted to customer-specific requirements.

Moreover, for the first time Profile Line combines Ewag’s ProGrind software with Walter’s Helitronic Tool Studio software in the Fanuc CNC system.

The result is an expansion in the range of applications that can be performed on a variety of inserts.

Indeed, according to Walter Ewag, even the most complex insert geometries — such as those used for drilling or milling applications — can be ground in one set-up.