A company with ambitious expansion plans for the CNC production and regrinding of woodworkers’ profile and spiral tooling has invested in a Helitronic Power Regrinder from Walter GB of Redditch.
Gerrymet employs 32 people in the manufacture and regrinding of wide bandsaws and tungsten carbide circular saws as well as spiral and profile cutters.
Company director Martin Lefevre said the Helitronic would handle a much wider range of tooling and enable Gerrymet to achieve considerable productivity gains by automating what has traditionally been a manual process.
The regrinder can accommodate rotating tools 400mm long and 320mm diameter – or 390mm or face grinding. The machine has X, Y and Z axes travels of 500x320x 660mm and features an 11.5kW spindle drive producing 19Nm of constant torque and 0-8,500rpm.
Digital drives ensure rapid transverse rates of 15m/min in all linear axes and 120O/sec on rotational axes.
Mr Lefevre said the user-friendly WWM Walter Window Mode control system was central to the resulting levels of flexibility. Having looked at other machines, the company plumped for the Helitronic. Mr Lefevre said: ‘It ideally suited the type of profile cutters we wanted to handle. The machine will enable us to process the tools unmanned – and that will result in unprecedented productivity improvements.’
